So it has been a while since I’ve posted, but that isn’t because nothing has been happening here. On the contrary, I’ve been consumed with a 6 day orientation in the city of Daejeon; a smaller city in Central South Korea. The orientation was required by EPIK (English Program In Korea) who is the company that employs me and placed me in Seoul. While some teachers logged their orientation hours before our contracts started on March 1st, I was placed in the later orientation group with about 250 other teachers from all around South Korea. Some of the teachers had just arrived to Korea and had not even been to their homes or schools, while others had been teaching for over a month, just like me. EPIK sent us Seoul teachers on a charter bus very early Saturday morning and it took us about 2 hours to arrive in Daejeon. Although it is in no way a rural town, Daejeon is a much smaller town than Seoul. Which honestly wasn’t much of a shock since Seoul is the 6th biggest city in the world.
As soon as we arrived at the orientation site, EPIK rushed us in to welcome lectures and opening ceremonies and all that fluff. I was lucky enough to have a good friend from back in Seoul attend the orientation as well, but we both very quickly were able to meet some amazing people!
The EPIK staff of English speaking Koreans were all so helpful and had everything planned out so well! I was shocked at how available they were for questions, help or support of any kind.
Although it was nice to have a break from teaching for a week, I ironically felt as though I was back in the classroom as a student. We went to class from 9 AM until 1 PM, had a break for lunch, then went back to class from 2 PM until 5:30 PM, had a break for dinner, and then went to class again from 7 PM until 8:30 PM. We did this every day from Sunday until Wednesday. On Wednesday, we had group presentations for a few hours in the morning, and then were able to go on an amazing field trip to a tradition village! It was AMAZING! I got placed in a really fun group and we participated in some great activities! We learned how to make rice cakes out of rice dough
Went on a beautiful bike ride
Hand dyed scarves using traditional Chinese medicines for dye and played traditional Korean games
And lastly, went on an AMAZING hike to the top of one of the mountains that overlooked a large group of lakes.
The most fascinating aspects of the scenery was that the lakes were forbidden to be used by people or have much built around the lakes, because the water was to be used only for drinking purposes and things of that nature. Having nothing around like that was a fascinating site.
It was great to meet new people at orientation and although the classes were filled with information that was somewhat redundant of all the classes I took about education in college, I did learn some new prospective and helpful hints about teaching English as a second language. Overall, it was an adventure I enjoyed! And now, I’m ready for a Seoul weekend. J
Love and miss you all!
No comments:
Post a Comment