No longer living in a love motel!

I have been in Seoul exactly 18 days and I am alive! Sick...but alive.

I had to drop $60 on a humidifier today (after some punk sold me a useless one on craigslist) because it is so dry here! I'm pretty sure that is why I am sick and it is near impossible to teach a class of squirming elementary school students with a hoarse voice.

Let me catch you up on several events since I arrived:

For my first two weeks here, my school paid for me to stay at Motel Prince, as I mentioned earlier. What I did not mention was that this is a love motel. Guests can literally pay by the hour and you can guess exactly what they are used for: teenage meetups, secret rendez-vous, and marital affairs. The place was pretty packed on the weekends and we learned not to make eye contact as people rushed out of the elevator with their heads down, not wanting to be recognized. It really wasn't as dramatic as I am describing, most of the time Emily and I had the floor to ourselves.

I have since moved into my own studio apartment near the National Police Hospital subway stop in Garak-dong (dong = neighborhood) Songpa-gu (gu = district) of Seoul. I took over the apartment from the foreign teacher at my school that I am replacing. Our school pays for our apartments, which is really nice. I do still have to pay building fees, electricity, and internet though.

Classic washing machine under the stove

Since I took over my apartment from another teacher, almost everything I needed was already there. Avalon (the company I work for) also delivered a huge box of supplies with bedding, cleaning supplies, kitchen items, bath towels, etc.

I am teaching at Langcon (the elementary-only branch of Avalon) Songpa campus. I had training at another campus about an hour away by subway with all other new teachers. This was a surprisingly well organized and informative service. We were trained by the Avalon HR department and got to meet other teachers that were just starting at different campuses. Training was in the morning for several hours for about four days. After training, we (me and Emily, the other new teacher at my school) would head back to Songpa (our campus) and shadow teachers during their classes. In training, we learned the Avalon and Langcon curricula,  had a crash course in Hangul (the Korean alphabet), and presented a lesson for "mock teaching" on the final day.

Emily and I both arrived on the same day, both stayed at the Prince, and are both the new teachers at our campus. It has been extremely useful being able to do everything with another new person: going to training, getting our bank accounts and alien registration, trying to find places to eat...

There are five foreign teachers and five Korean teachers at my school. There is also a Korean director who reports to headquarters and oversees everything at the campus. In Korean business hierarchy, he is God. There are two things you should know about working in Korea.

1. First, hierarchy is extremely important in business. Korean social structure is based on respecting your elders, which is so deeply embedded in the culture that the most difficult part of learning Korean is sorting through the honorifics. For example, it would be extremely disrespectful to bring something up to the boss that you should bring up to your manager, who would then report to the boss. Everything makes its way slowly up or down the chain of command, no matter how inefficient.
2. Second, schools are run like businesses - for profit. I work at a hagwon, which is a private academy that specializes in teaching English. Parents pay a lot of money to send their children to different hagwons after the regular school day is over. Because college admissions are so competitive, students are basically preparing to enter university from the time they are in kindergarten. A hagwon is basically like a really expensive YMCA or Boys and Girls Club. Because the market is so competitive, the director is under a lot of pressure to keep up enrollment. This means pleasing parents at all costs. This may mean placing a student who barely knows English phonics in a class discussing the science of perception because the mother doesn't want her child in a low level class.

These are just a couple of things that contribute to the work dynamic in Korea. I should probably say that even though I am presenting a lot of these differences in a negative light, I can see the value in the Korean system and respect the way they do business. It is just so very different from the collaborative, open workplaces I am used to.  

I can say a lot more about this topic, but this is becoming a very boring post, so I will save that for later. Here are some pictures of some of the things I have been up to recently...

Namsan Tower with Andy - the highest point in Seoul

View from the mountain

Myeong-dong: the busiest shopping district in Seoul

Emily, Bekah, and I at Rock Bar in Hongdae

Just a great hotel advertisement woo

Eating pumpkin pie with chopsticks on Thanksgiving at work

New desk and double chins

"suffering much"...this is so Korea

Totally normal names for candy bars: Crunky and Ghana

This was Thanksgiving night actually, so we classed it up a little after Burger King for lunch. We splurged on an imported wine (any wine here is super expensive, like $15 for two buck Chuck quality). We also tried Korean wine, or as I like to describe it, grape Jolly Ranchers dissolved in port.

Kayla eating bulgogi udon that we always order in for lunch

KOREAN FOOD IS AMAZING!!!!

Chamchi jumokbap - rice ball filled with tuna rolled in seaweed

My go-to meal: dolsot bibimbap (Korean rice "salad" in hot stone bowl)

Jjinmandu (dumplings - one of my favorite Korean foods), dolsot bibimbap, dubu kimchi (tofu and kimchi), some udon soup, and a ton of sides

All Korean food comes with side dishes. This always includes kimchi and usually includes several others like dried anchovies, pickled radish, onion soup, Korean spinach, fishcakes, mung bean sprouts, and rice. Also, Koreans use metal chopsticks and long metal spoons for soups.

 Bed time! More later!