Before I get to the things that this blog is more interested in explaining, like a raging social life and what it's really like to teach in rural South Korea, I should probably talk about the general set-up of orientation. This way, my family understands that I'm still here to work from the onset. Orientation lasted from Wednesday, August 17th until Thursday, August 25th. Our hotel expenses were totally taken care of, and the hotel provided us with three great meals every day--breakfast, as I mentioned, had a completely Western menu for those who dig that; lunch and dinner, on the other hand, were total immersion. Fish soup, various kimchi, raw fish, tofu, octopus, more fish soup, rice, radishes, more raw fish...you get the picture. A typical day's schedule at orientation would look something like:
7:30 am - 8:30 am Breakfast
9:00 am - 11:45 am Elementary OR Middle/High School Orientation (training, lectures, activities, etc.)
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm - 4:30 pm More training, lectures, etc.
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm Down-time in the room, time to explore Gwangju, basically do anything but sit and listen to lectures.
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm Dinner
The rest of the night would then be free for us to get into all kinds of trouble, if we so desired. Orientation was really well organized; we were split into either Elementary (my home base) teachers or Middle & High School teachers, and went about our business accordingly. Some days we would practice lesson planning, other days we would learn about games we can play with our students, and there were always plenty of good cultural lessons like music, food, and even drinking etiquette involved. Here's a picture of a typical 9:00 am session, with all the teachers in the room:
Now that I've established that I was indeed learning how to teach in South Korea, we can move on to things that are a bit more fun to talk about. Like drinking soju and playing cards!
Who doesn't love a good game of spoons in the hotel room? Definitely an early treat that reminded me of home; as some of you know, the Hurd family is infamous for its rowdy games of Spoon at the Jersey Shore. This is the room that Aaron and I shared, and it was one of many nights that we finally beat the jetlag and got social. From left to right are our friends Nichole (from Ontario, Canada), Toni (also from Ontario), Muggsy (also Ontario), Aaron (Wisco dude), Casey and Kyleen (really cool married couple, also out of Ontario), and Sam (from Calgary, Alberta).
Speaking of drinking at the hotel...
This would be the man that hired me to teach in South Korea. As you can see, he is playing flip cup. We all played flip cup. In the hotel lobby. Am I still at UW-Madison?
Getting the teams together.
Our team had a good run, but was knocked out in the semi-finals. From left to right: Monti (straight outta Chicago), myself, Beverly (from New Brunswick, Canada), and Erik (from the Yukon Territory).
I'll keep this one brief, and be right back with a final post about the last days of orientation--some pictures of the nightlife in Gwangju, as well as pictures from our field trip to various beautiful locales throughout the area. Be back soon, folks. Thanks for reading.
Love,
Sam
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