“Greeting Card mishaps, getting lost, and being found” :)

Well, so much has happened since my last post and there have been enough adventures to cover two blogs.

AK Plaza: I confess this picture was taken off the internet – it was PACKED the day we went and to have stopped for pictures would have meant being trampled.

Two weekends past, Jen and I set off on an adventure to a giant shopping centre known as AK Plaza. Upon reaching the facility, both she and I decided that neither one of us were big ‘mall’ fans, and attempted to find a more quaint area in which to stroll and observe Korean life. We ended up in a relatively large store which seemed to sell a bit of everything (reminded me of a cross between Chapters/Indigo, Michaels and Staples) with a small bit of a toy store thrown in for kicks. It was there that we discovered some awesome greeting cards, and were impressed to find an English card section. The only problem was that the Korean attempts to express themselves in English were a little off base… resulting in some rather humorous mistranslation of ideas:

“Beautiful people make beautiful love like flowers in a Garden. Thank-you for your love.”

“YOU ARE NOT UGLY.”

And then there were the random language swaps, where a card would start off in English, and end in French (PS – Chrissy, this is your birthday card! I have yet to find a post-office so I can mail it! I hope you had a great one!):

“HAPPY Birthday; je te souhaite un heureux et joyeux anniversaire.”

It was also at this store that I found my travel mug:

A very blurry “loveing sky without wings.” Classic.

After stopping off at a local coffee shop we headed home for the evening.

The next day we set out on our 1.5 hour walk to find our English speaking church while in Korea. We only got lost twice! Eventually we found it and were pleasantly surprised to find that it’s a decent sized congregation – mainly English-speaking Koreans – who all seem really sweet. There was a great welcome centre type deal where us newcomers got to sit down with some other new people as well as meet the pastor and pray. There were a few other ‘foreigners’ who were extremely kind as well, and many people have offered to help us find our way around life in Korea. One of the young Korean girls offered to teach us how to use the subway system and got us an English copy of the subway maps. With her help we were able to get home much faster with only a half hour walk after getting off the subway. So far, Global English Ministry seems to be an awesome church, and we’re excited to be going back next week :) They also have some sort of orphanage ministry starting up again in the fall, and we’re super excited about that!

Later that week, I got a strange knock on my door. Very persistent, someone kept yelling “Annyeong?! Annyeong?!” (translated that means “Hello?! Hello?!”), at which point I would respond with “Hello?!”. The lady sounded confused and yet kind enough to warrant a response, so I opened the door. I’ve never seen Korean women look so shocked :) Eyes wide, they bowed and handed me this:

Having no idea what this was, I smiled and thanked them, returning their bow. Apparently they hadn’t seen too many foreigners before, and looked utterly perplexed at my presence. To fill the awkward silence, they offered another bow. As is polite custom here, I again returned their bow. Then they bowed again. Thinking that this was the final goodbye bow, I returned it once more and took a step back into my apartment… but they didn’t stop… they kept bowing. Not wanting to be rude, I kept bowing as well. Eventually, as time continued to pass, and no end was in sight, I offered “Komsumnida” (“thank-you”). They bowed again, I bowed again, I waved and backed into my apartment, closing my door behind me. Looking at the nifty pamphlet, I thought it was an advertisement for a fruit store or something… until I spotted this:

 

That’s right. Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses. Fascinating! I’ve never had any come to my door in Canada, and yet here in Korea they have already found me. Later there was a giant group of them meeting in the park outside my apartment. It was quite the sight.

Well, that’s it for today! We’re on vacation this week so sometime within the next couple of days I’ll have the next post up – this one will involve last weekend’s adventure in Daejeon: “Filled with hot air, doing loop-de-loops, kung-foo fighting and meeting Romeo.” There will be lots of pictures :)

Hope you’re all doing well!!!

~Kate

Indeed!

We live an exciting life for sure. Yes, Jen, the pay is slightly less, but our workload is also smaller time-wise. With this in mind, however, we also must note that with LCI we were to be given lesson plans, while with GDA we are responsible for making them up ourselves. Now, though this task may be slightly more intimidating and admittedly shall be more work, it also allows us to have great opportunity for creativity and the chance to really make our classrooms our own. I’m kinda going into this adventure with plans to gain some real teaching experience, and the opportunity to really dig in and create a curriculum is actually appealing to me! Like Jen said, we’re getting good vibes from this school, and we’re even more excited about going to Korea than we were before!

Now, on the more nerdy side, I’m sitting in my last Hebrews class and have nothing to do. So, I’m going to give our faithful readers a tour of BUNDANG and GDA.

If you click HERE, it will take you to our school’s website. We shall be employed at the Bundang ‘campus’. Jen and I were both fascinated by the fact that they used all non-Asian children in their advertisements/web-site. It’s slightly sad that they want the kids to be seen as ‘English’ as possible, and we’ve made it our mission to love these little Asian children and try to learn more about their culture. Anyways, check out the pictures – it looks like a neat place! For those of us fascinated by the wikipedia site, click HERE to gain insight into the world of Bundang. Without ever having been there, I’ve noticed that there is a nice, nature-type focus, and parks seem to be popular. HERE is Bundang Central Park. I have also learned that Bundang is considered one of the richer areas in South Korea, and designer stores seem to be in close proximity. The Samsung Plaza, featured HERE, is a good example of this designer-marketing.

As Jen mentioned, she is going to be the brave soul who arrives first. I will follow a couple of weeks later. We’re determined to find a neat church in the area, and I really want to get connected with a Young Adult sort of group – it would be sweet to have a group of people to hike with/explore the nation with. Though I’ve heard that Bundang is the location of one of the world’s Mega Churches (think huge audiences), I’m not sure the HUGE church atmosphere is my style. HERE is the wikipedia information about the Global Mission Church, and HERE and HERE are the GMC’s websites (in Korean).

This should be exciting. We’ll keep you posted.

Change of Plans!!

Ok, folks....so for once I have the presence of mind to post up on this wall a little about where we find ourselves at today!
So, on Sunday night I received a call from our lovely contact at ParkEnglish informing me that she had "good news and bad news, which I wanted first??" ...so of course, I said the bad news. Turns out the teachers we were to be replacing at LCI had decided to renew their contracts....which meant the positions were no longer open to Katie and I. I was taking this setback rather well, understanding that I still had some good news to hear. So then she informs me that they had found a replacement school for us....After getting off the phone with her, I immediately contacted Katie and we proceeded to look at the school's website, etc and the best part is: we are getting more positive vibes off of this opportunity than we were with the previous school (not that LCI was giving us bad vibes!)....so in terms of salary, it is a tad lower I think (? Katie, enlighten us all if you know something I don't!), but the hours are not as overwhelming as they would have been at LCI. The area of Bundang looks fabulous and nature-y and is right on a subway line to Seoul! The apartments also look pretty inviting--Katie and I will most likely be sharing a 2 bedroom aptm....
Now came the hard part: the catch with the positions was that they had different start dates: one at the end of June and the other in mid July...so we had to decide who would go it alone for a few weeks and through various factors we arrived at MOI! So in the relative time frame from now till then, I have major VISA application work that needs to be done!!!

Well, we have received our contracts (I am waiting to hear back from my sisters who have both been to Korea to teach and are offering their help by looking over the contract for possible downsides, etc) and will be going for our police record checks tomorrow as far as I know (as well as handing in our requests for transcripts sometime this week)....so things are beginning to pick up the pace!

*Jenz*

PS. On a funnier note: I had a crazy short little dream. I was at home and suddenly realized that my flight was leaving at 9 pm (please note that in the dream it was 830 and since I live an hour and a bit away from the airport there was no way I was making my flight) and I still was not packed nor did I have luggage within which to pack everything. So my sister, who was supposed to drive me, whips out her luggage from underneath the bed (random!), tells me to throw all my clothes into a garbage bag and pack it all into the luggage bags on the way to the airport...so then we are in the car and realize all of a sudden that my flight wasn't going to leave until the following morning!!!
OK, so we are going to hope and PRAY that this doesn't actually happen but something tells me it won't because I'm the type of person who packs three weeks in advance, especially with a big thing like this...anyhow, just thought it was funny how stressed I felt in the dream. Cheers!