Travel Hacking September 4, 2014

Now that I’ve decided to move on from Korea, I want to try and maintain a bit of my jet-setting ways.  I love traveling and seeing new places and I would like to continue that, even when my disposable income falls a bit (Read: considerably) moving into the next stage of my life.

 

So I’ve been using my deskwarming time to research travelhacking – unique ways of booking and accruing frequent flyer miles (and also how to properly redeem them) so that traveling is so much easier to accomplish.

 

The webstie travelhacking.org has helped a lot.  If you want to check it out they have a 2 week trail membership for $1:

 

Also, the amazing travelhacker Chris Guillebeau has some amazing tips on his site for ways to get miles without signing up for credit cards or even spending a penny.

 

This week I have not spent a dime and accumulated over 1000 miles.  Not a bad gig really…

 

If you are interested, click on the banner above and take a look.  A small commitment of time can have pretty decent rewards.

Accomplished Life Goals May 8, 2014

Accomplished Life Goals

 

People at home always question why people like me would choose to move overseas. And that is a fair question. We’ve picked up and moved across the world to a completely different culture, to a language that we don’t speak (the vast majority of us) and will give up on trying to learn (guilty) in a system so frustratingly inefficient and asinine that one is frequently driven almost to the brink of self-violence (mostly facepalms and headdesks).

 

Mostly this just leads to ranting on the internet though…

 

And as I work my way through my third year at the same placement (almost unheard of as most teachers seem to bail out of the country after 1-2 years and almost certainly move to a different school after that time should they choose to stay), I have been thinking through my reasons as I have circled around to the conclusion that this shall be my last year in Korea.

 

My main reasons for coming to Korea were: student loan debt and travel.

 

I graduated from my University with $19,000 in loan debt in May of 2011. I had to start making payments in December of that year and the payments were expected to continue until October of 2021. But as of payday this month (May 2014) I will make my final payment on my loans and be done with the whole process after only two and a half years of payments.

 

Any American college graduate can tell you how insane that is.

 

And despite frequent and slightly extravagant travel (by my standards), I haven’t run up debt on my credit card either, usually paying it off within 2 months when it had higher balances like when I vacationed to Australia and New Zealand this past January.

 

I think I’ve done pretty darn good.

 

At the same time that I have been hitting up the travel bug (in addition to Korea and a trip home my first year, I’ve gone to Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand <- bucket list items for me), and getting myself sorted financially, I’ve been able to teach.

 

At home I would likely still be pulling in some part time job when that is the last thing that I want to be dealing with just now which was a lot of work for enough money to get by only considering I was living rent-free with my parents.

 

Working and living in Korea have given me all those first-year classroom experiences while helping me gain confidence as an adult to live on my own and travel on my own and become me as an entity separate from my family.

 

So why will I be leaving when my contract is up in February and not staying on

 

It’s time.

 

I’ve been away from my country and my life long enough. As much as being here has done for me, it also puts me, and many other foreigners, into this sense of arrested development. As most people come over here directly after graduation from university, the vast majority of people still treat this like they are in college. There is a reason one of the stereotypes for foreigners here is that they drink a lot. That’s not to say Koreans don’t…but foreigners hold their own and since we stick out so much we are far more visible when we do it.

 

I feel it is time for me to finally grow up and get on with my life. Get a real job stateside and settle myself from a place of strength. No debts to hold me down, a retirement account started (will be one of the first things I try to figure out once I return) and hopefully a relatively stable future ahead.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

And hey – I can always come back!

I’ve finally lost it (OR: How I came to the decision to stay at my crazy position for another year…) December 13, 2013

 

So – I had this grand plan. I was going to transfer at the end of my contract to the local Girl’s High School. It would mean only being at one school a week, with a higher caliber of students and frankly what would seem to be a better staff and relationship with said staff, if they current teacher there is any indication.

 

But the best laid plans of mice and men…

 

Rumors started to circulate a few weeks back of budget cuts heading our way. For the past few intake cycles, major cities have been cutting out native English teachers, starting from the top down taking out high school, then middle school placements. Seoul is down to elementary only. It would seem that my countryside province is not safe from these cuts either. First I heard that cuts were only in discussion, then that 30% of high school position would be cut – starting in cities and leaving the countryside alone (which I liked because the school I was aiming for is in the countryside). But the word came down today (Friday) the topper of the crappiest week that I have had in Korea: all high school positions in Gyeongbuk province are being cut.

 

My co-teacher hit me with this news just this morning as I came in the door, coat still on and not even at my desk yet. I was given these choices:

 

1) Stay at my current position. The high school would be eliminated, but an additional middle school position (from another placement that was being cut entirely) would be added, leaving me with three middle schools to teach at, but mostly everything would remain the same as it is now.

 

2) Move to an unknown elementary school (possibly multiple, but who really knows) position in Gumi, a decent sized city about a half hour outside of Daegu, a major city, and almost smack dab in the middle of the country.

 

3) Move to an unknown elementary school (possibly multiple, but who really knows) position in Pohang, a coastal city on eastern edge of Korea.

 

4) Go home to the States.

 

I was floored. My plans crumbling away before me I had to sort out what to do for the next year of my life. To be honest, moving back to America only flitted across my mind for a moment. I had already done all the math and figured everything out for staying a third year here. With an extra year, I can do all the traveling that I want to do so much easier. With an extra year, I can finish paying off all of my student loan debt and have quite a bit left to save. And frankly, to leave now feels almost like going out with my tail between my legs and I just can’t bring myself to do that.

 

So I spent the morning, working out pro/con lists and talking to other teachers here, and phoning a few people back home to get input. Eventually I landed on this decision: to stay where I am.

 

Everyone who can see my facebook is going to think I’m insane (well…more so than normal) because this week has been nothing but be railing against the stupidity of my school and tension headaches caused by me clenching my jaw shut to tight that it was creaking. But here are my reasons why, so I can have this in one place and don’t have to explain a million times:

 

I would be taking a pay cut to move to either of the cities. In fact, it would be a cut from my current pay rate, nevermind a cut from what I am supposed to receive after my raise that I receive for signing on for an additional year. It would be a $250/month (roughly) cut – which is more than my monthly loan payment is according to my loan servicers.

I already know the students here, the situation here, and I have grown accustomed to it. I know how to work the system here if necessary. And I have the kids worked into a system that helps everyone, the students and the teachers to keep them involved in the lesson and give them the best shot at learning something that they may actually take home with them and remember.

They cut the high school. All those students who drive me up a wall? They will be in high school next year. The co-teacher who makes me want to scream and does exactly nothing to help me teach in the classroom? Won’t have to work with him. Next year will be middle school only and frankly that is perfect.

I do not want to teach Elementary. I can do it, I have done it, but I have no desire to do so. There is a reason that I went to school to study secondary education. I do not think that I will mentally survive a year of classrooms of 30-40 elementary students. I think I would be crazy and in a madhouse before the end of first semester.

I am only looking for one more year. I will probably be going back to America after that so job security beyond the one year is not a high item on my priority list. I just need one more year and this current situation gives me that.

I don’t have to move. Part of the appeal of moving to the new school was that I would only have to get my stuff a five-minute cab ride away. Instead, I would have to convince someone to drive me and my things down to Gumi or over to Pohang and that would be far more of a hassel than I want to deal with just now. Besides, I just changed landlords and they are really nice and sweet and SPEAK ENGLISH! (*with cute New Zealand accents*) and I don’t want to leave my small town behind just yet.

All of my friends are in this town. If I move, I would once again be in a location where no one speaks my language and I know no one. And since I don’t do the bar seen, meeting new people would be doubly complicated. Where I am now, the town is so small that you meet everyone just walking down the street to do your grocery shopping.

A fear of the unknown. There is too much up in the air. I was fine with it when I was fresh off the plane and had no idea where I was going, just that a teaching job was waiting for me when I got there. But now, I have established myself here. I’ve put down a few roots here and I don’t want to give that up for something else as yet undefined.

 

So with my ultimatum of having a decision before the end of the school day (1:45 today because of final exams), I turned it my decision just before heading to lunch. I am staying at my location, ditching the high school and picking up a new middle school. It will not be an easy year, but it will be a year of tried and true methods of education, watching some of my students continue to improve and hopefully a meeting of many goals along the way. So that is my plan. Those are my reasons. Agree or not, it is what is happening.

Lessons that WORK! November 25, 2013

Sometimes as a teacher, no matter where in the world you are working, you have to just throw some kind of lesson together just to have something to present when you go and stand in front of your students. You didn’t have the energy or will to put together anything amazing. It’s a lesson you fully expect to have students zoning out during.

 

Last year I grabbed up a lesson from on online lesson depository and altered it a but, created a worksheet and used it with my kids.

 

Last year when I did this lesson, I had even the lowest level students in class mumbling the words (usually they just stare off into space so this is a win). I even had my co-teacher running to the back of the room so the students wouldn’t see him and trying out the words while dividing them up into syllables.

 

I ended the class by having the kids create haikus. These are some of the results:

 

It is very hard!

I really love Infinite

very very good

 

The flower is cute

the flower is beautiful

I don’t like flower

 

You are beautiful

I like yesterday TV

Now is English Class

 

No! No! No! Carrot

Love Love Love Chocolate Yo!

Yo Yo Carrot ACK!

 

Let’s go play the game

I am going to the school

fire in the hallway

 

PowerPoint: Syllables PowerPoint

Worksheet: Syllables Worksheet

Day from hell…(or WHAT THE HELL?!) October 10, 2013

The last 24 hours have been a test…that’s the only explanation that I have.

Seriously.  First, yesterday after my water was turned off for some reason that remains unexplained.  It wasn’t just me either, it was at least the whole floor if not the entire building.  I opened a tap to do my dishes and nothing came out except a weird growl/gurgle sound from the pipes.  It came back though.

Then last night I went to wash my hands after using the bathroom, and suddenly my feet were cold and soaking wet.  I looked under the sink and the drain pipe had mostly fallen out.  It was only kept from crashing to the floor by the physical drain itself.  The pipe is broken but it was too late at night to go to my landlord and explain what had happened to I was just out of luck, and remained so this morning where I had to wash my face and brush my teeth in my kitchen sink.  I still don’t know how I am going to explain this to my landlord enough to get him to come and look at it when neither of us understands each other’s language.

Then this morning, I was in the bathroom finishing my make-up and the light flickered off in the bathroom.  The window there points off into a storage area so there is no light that comes in there, making it pitch dark.  The only mirror that I have is in the bathroom which makes this something of a problem.  I used the light of my cell phone to finish getting ready this morning and headed off to work.

Once I got to work, in order to get into the office, you have to scan your fingerprint.  This machine seems to hate me in particular.  It only opens to my print maybe 1/5 of the time.  As I am the first person in most days this is something of a problem and I have to continually scan my finger.  In the end, I ran it 10 times before becoming frustrated and going off to the bathroom.  Luckily someone else came while I was in the bathroom and unlocked the doors.

Then I sit down at my computer.  Within five minutes of booting up, I receive the blue screen of death and have to reboot it.  Once it’s back up and running, I reboot it again.  Twenty minutes later it’s blue screened again!  Fed up at this point and frazzled I decide to give up for the day and instead pull out a game for my students instead of the intensive lessons that I had prepared because I simply don’t have the patience to work through them today properly. Then the fourth blue screen happens and I just give up and read a book for twenty minutes.

When I arrive at my classroom for my first class of the day, the computer technician and working on my classroom computer which means that everything I have for today is possibly being thrown out of the window right now and I was right.  The tech was on the computer for the first half and hour of class, including interrupting my make-shift “five things” game to have me input the password several times and refused to let me write it down for him in case the kids might see…

Anyway, ten minutes into my impromptu list game, three students come storming into class, all crying and slam themselves down in their seats pretty much halting the class to a standstill. Now all of the girls refuse to participate and no one will tell me what is wrong and I still have to force my way through forty minutes of class in this atmosphere with the tech still tapping and clicking away at the side of the room.  That class felt like a train wreck from beginning to end but I held on until the bell and managed to keep everything together.

Then I went back to my computer in the office only to find it missing.  The computer technician is going to take it back to his shop and sort out what all is wrong with it.  I could give you a list of a million things just about but have fun.  So now I am stuck with no work computer, most of my saved work having been carted away, and I’m only halfway through the day.  I still have two classes to teach after lunch.  Then when I get home I have to deal with the sink issue and my landlord and see how that works out…

Lord grant me the strength…

Word of Mouth September 30, 2013

 

The thing about being a foreigner in Korea is that you survive by word of mouth.  Seriously though, if not for the massive foreigner internet community in Korea I wouldn’t know how to do much of anything.

 

The internet helped me figure out what buttons did what on my washing machine.  The internet taught me useful phrases to use around the town.  The internet allowed me to easily search up bus or train times if I wanted to take a trip somewhere.  The internet rocks.

 

Especially when it comes to anything medical related.  I’m willing to go to hairdressers who speak no English, but I will not see a doctor, dentist, etc. by choice unless I can have a conversation with them and understand what is being said.  Not much of a point otherwise in my opinion.

 

Now for a while I’ve been having a lot of headaches, always coming towards the end of the day at work, and always originating just behind my eyes.  Having gone through this kind of thing before I knew that this most likely had something to do with my glasses.  Maybe my eyes had changed and now the prescription was off…who knows…but having been three years since my last pair of glasses it probably was time to see someone out it.

 

But I needed one who spoke English and I really didn’t want to have to travel all the way to Seoul and pay extra money unless I really had to.

 

Then a couple of months ago I heard through the internet grapevine of an optometrist in Andong, a nearby city, who spoke English, passably at least if not perfectly.  I was elated.  Especially having had friends go to him and use him and walk away totally satisfied with the experience.

 

So I decided to give it a shot.

 

I mentioned to my co-teacher that I was going to head to Andong after school on Friday to try and find this doctor and next thing I knew I was being told to just leave school after lunch since all of my classes were done and get it done early.

 

So, signed a little paperwork acknowledging that I was leaving school early and off I went…to sit at the bus stop for a while.

 

I had class until 12:40 and lunch after that so I eventually left the school around 1:00.  Because my school is so far out in the middle of nowhere the buses don’t run frequently.  I ended up sitting at the bus stop for just over an hour before a bus came along and it was about 2:30, and then I had to go by my place and get some headache medication so I missed the next bus to Andong, so now I had to wait until 3:50…annoying but okay.

 

Get to Andong, and have to take another city bus into town since the bus terminal is at the edge.  5:15 I’m in town and now it’s time to start searching for this eye shop.  Thanks again to word of mouth from the internet, I found it without too much trouble.

 

The shop was filled with high school girls getting cosmetic contacts.  Literally, not because they needed glasses (or actually in the case of one girl she was wearing them behind her glasses…right…), but just because they wanted a different iris color.  There was even a pair there that I called the sharingan pair in my head because it looked just like the Uchiha eyes from the anime Naruto.

 

When it was my turn, I was taken to a room at the back and given a very thorough eye exam.  I have been visiting eye doctors for as long as I can remember but I think this exam taught me more about my eyes than any other exam.

 

For example, I always knew that my right eye was weaker than my left, what I did’t know what that it had just a slightest bit of a lazy drift to it that is not evident when you are looking at me but would likely help to cause all of the headaches that I got, especially since my old frames had warped over the years making my eyes have to work massive overdrive to focus together on any one object.

 

After spending 20 minutes checking my eyes, and being told that they were a challenge which got the optometrist excited, he had my prescription all sorted out and took me out to the show room (aka rest of the shop) and told me to select a new frame.  When I was looking at the frames I was baffled.  I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when I was seeing decent frames 5,000won or 10,000won.  Yes, there were some really expensive ones in the designer cases but most of them were around 40,000-60,000won.  I ended up picking a set of 10,000won frames.  Frames in the states are usually kind of expensive, or they are at the place my family goes to, but then it gets somewhat subsidized by insurance.  In Korea it was all out of pocket but sooo much cheaper.

 

After I picked my frames, he talked me through the different kinds of lenses he could use and what the differences were, from brand to coatings to the country that they were made in.  I picked a mid range set of lenses for 100,000won for the pair.  So in total my glasses cost me 110,000won or roughly $100.

 

For all of it.

 

But that wasn’t the best part.

 

The best part was being told that it would take about a half an hour and then they would be ready.

 

I think I just blinked at him for a bit.  It usually takes like a week back in the states before my glasses are ready for pick-up.  He handled it all just then in the shop.

 

I walked out a little over an hour after I entered wearing my brand new glasses.

 

Korea has this whole eye-care thing down.

 

And I only knew about it because of the internet’s word of mouth.

This Week in Huh?! – Week of 9/23/13 September 27, 2013

This week in Huh?!  –  Week of September 23^rd

So, do I get to be surprised at how surprised my students were to walk into the classroom and see me this week?  On Wednesday to some reason, as every class walked into the classroom they seemed really shocked that I was in there and that they were going to have me as their teacher…um…I always teach your class on Wednesday…?

A student came up to me before class on Wednesday and pointed down her vest which was bulging out slighting.  She kept trying to get me to look down her vest and I was like, that would be strange.  Finally she says “baby kitty!” and physically grabs my arm so I’m close enough that I can look down and yet…hunkering down inside of her vest was a baby kitten.  This isn’t the first time this student has brought baby animals into class.  She lost a baby mouse in my classroom last year that we spent the rest of class trying to coach out from under the desk.  The kitten didn’t get on the loose but I’m still baffled at schools allowing baby animals to be brought to class.

With things always in flux in Korean schools, sometimes you want to smack your head against a wall, especially since everyone except the foreign teacher has often been made aware of these changes at some point.  Take this Thursday for example – at some point you think that I would have been informed that the schedule had changed so that classes were all shortened.  You would think that…

This Week in Huh?! – Week of 9/9/13 September 16, 2013

I know this is a little late…sorry…

This week in Huh?!  –  Week of September 9^th

Since I’ve been in Korea, I have let my hair grow out considerably.  It now reaches the bottom of my rib cage at the tips.  It’s been worn up for quite a few months due to the heat, while growing an extra couple of inches, so it’s been a while since my students have seen it’s full length.  I left my hair down this week and responses varied from people petting me (seriously…stop that) to a student pointing at my head and shouting “Ghost hair!”  Because apparently, my hair is long enough to make them think of Asian horror movie ghost like the girl from The Ring.  Thanks…

This week there is national English listening testing.  Each grade will be tested on a different day.  The dates and times for these have been known since the beginning of the school year.  Even I, the foreign teacher who is kept out of the loop the majority of the time, have known the dates and had them marked on my calendar.  BUT, in true Korean style, the day of the tests arrive and the office is a flurry of activity, as teachers try to reorganize the schedule so that the correct grade is in English class at the time that the test goes live on the radio.  You’ve literally known these dates for months?  Now you think about accommodating your schedules for them?  Korea…efficiency.  Look it up.  Learn it.  Love it.  But seriously…

So…I might have experimented on my kids…Wait! It’s not what you think! September 9, 2013

So – I did an experiment with my students a few weeks back.  As something of a fun opener for the semester I gave all of my students the same 10 minute random topic quiz at the start of class.  All of them.  At all three of my schools, regardless of their year or English level.

At my Tuesday school, a private middle school, I gave all three grades the same questions.  Random things like showing a German flag and having them write out the country name in English, to identifying photos of famous people and writing out a number in Roman Numerals when given the number in English.  This school performed fantastically, with one perfect grade as well.

Then I gave the quiz at my main school, a lower lever public middle school.  They were given the exact same questions and the exact same time constraints.  They performed admirably, but I feel like their education outside of my room must be lacking if they can’t recognize flags.  They highest school I got out of the three grades at this school was a 4/10.

Finally I gave the quiz at my high school.  Exact same questions, same format, same time constraints.  And they scored…somewhere in the middle.  They tended to fair better than my main school (but not by much) averaging about 6/10, though one of the 3^rd grade (senior level) groups managed to score a 9/10.

So if I were to rank my students ability based on this, public middle school would be last place, public high school would be second and private middle school would be a resounding first.

I’m not entirely sure what I was so shocked by the results of this, having been teaching the majority of these students for a year and a half now, but somehow I hoped that they would prove me wrong.

Well, guess I better start preparing a lesson on flags…

Baking in a Rice Cooker: Apple Bread

A few months ago I got my hands on a rice cooker.  One of the other teachers in town wasn’t using the one that her school was nice enough to provide for her so I’ve taking possession of it until the end of the school year.  I was really excited when I got one too.

Not because I love rice or anything.

Definitely not.

The reason I was happy was because you can bake things in a rice cooker as well.  So I’ve been experimenting a bit with breads and such.  Most of them haven’t turned out wonderfully but I feel like I’m finally getting the hang of it.  So in honor of my newfound skills I shall share with you my new addiction: Apple Bread.

Ingredients:

–       1/2 cup Canola Oil

–       2 eggs, beaten

–       1 cup sugar

–       1/2 tsp vanilla

–       1 1/2 cups chopped apple (roughly 2 average sized apples)

–       1 1/2 cups flour

–       1 tsp cinnamon

–       1/2 tsp baking powder

–       1/2 tsp salt

First, mixed the dry ingredients together and set aside.

Then, crack the two eggs and whisk them together with the oil and vanilla and set aside.

Now for the main ingredient: the apples.

Peel the skin off of the apples and core them.

Chop them up into whatever size pieces you want.  I made mine rather small which meant that you could taste apples in the bread, but you didn’t feel the texture of them in your mouth since it got lost in the bread.

Now mix the dry the wet and the apples all together.  The mixture tastes surprisingly good, which can’t usually be said for this kind of mix, so there may have been some bowl liking afterwards…

With a little elbow grease this…

…becomes this.

As for cooking this in a traditional oven – I don’t know what temperature or time but you can experiment on your own if you wish.  But for a rice cooker:

Butter the inside of the rice cooker bowl well, over the bottom and about halfway up the side.  This helps keep the bread from burning and allows it to slide out easy after cooking.

Pour the dough in and even it out as best you can.

My rice cooker is one of the simple ones with just an on/off function.  You will probably have to turn the cycle on about 5-6 times before a toothpick through the center comes out clean.

Pull the bowl from the cooker and let it cool away from heat.  You should be able to slide it out into a tea towel after about 5 minutes or so.

Sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar on top for extra sweetness if you want.

Sugar and spice and everything VERY NICE!

Cut and enjoy.

Btw…I ended up making two of these in one weekend because it ended up being the only thing I ate after I cooked it.  Yes, it was that good.

Hope you enjoyed!