Aha! Suncheon

Sorry for the delay in posts, but I just got back from a week away in Japan! More on that later though...

So I left off at orientation. On our last day in Gwangju, our "co-teachers," aka "guardian angels" (that was actually what we were told) met us at the hotel and drove us to our new cities. The drive to Suncheon is only about an hour, and the views around us were amazing. Korea is small and very mountainous so the typical scene consists of highway, farms, and rolling hills in the background.

Suncheon. Let's start with a direct quote from Wikipedia: "Suncheon is dubbed by its city council as the City of Beautiful People, and its slogan is "Aha! Suncheon."" So there you have it! But seriously, it is a great place to live. Being the second largest city in the province at nearly 300,000 people, it's full of places to eat, places to drink, places to walk, and of course beautiful people.

There were about 10 of us placed here from my orientation, and over a hundred more foreigners in the city. The best part about Suncheon is definitely Shidae (pronounced Shee-day), our apartment complex. Almost all the foreigners in the city live in the same 2 buildings, which makes it feel like a dorm for grown ups! The apartments themselves aren't especially nice (I'll post pictures of mine soon), but being able to meet up with my friends every night and easily meet new foreigners all the time is definitely worth it. Oh yeah, and they're spottable from pretty much every point throughout the city, having been built using only neon colors, especially orange. See those beauties sitting towards the top of the hill? That's my new home.

I'm on the 3rd floor, but some of my friends are lucky and are up on the 19th or 20th floors. Check out this view! That's Suncheon city and its surrounding mountain ranges, and I believe this direction looks toward Suncheon Bay in the distance.

Shidae is in a great location--grocery store, department stores, restaurants, hair cutter, dry cleaners, taxi stand, etc. are all within about a 30 second walk. PLUS, several of my new favorite place of business: MiniStop. About one per block in every Korean town, MiniStops are essentially 7-11s (or a lesser Quick Chek, if you will), but in reality they're so much more. They have tables and chairs outside every one--perfect for socializing with other waygooks (foreigners), meeting random Koreans (mainly old men), and drinking 1200 won ($1) bottles of soju! Typical Friday night:

We usually make other plans, but end up sitting there for hours...and hours. Our favorite MiniStop is also conveniently located next to our favorite restaurant/our "spot," Liparty fine dining. And by fine dining, I mean $1.50 ramen, $1 sushi, $3 spaghetti, and that's pretty much all I've tried because the rest of the menu is in Korean and doesn't have an accompanying picture.

Shidae is also a few minutes walk from a great park--there's a beautiful pond bordered by a nice running path. Every night, every hour on the hour, there is a fountain and lights show in the pond. There is also big square where they give free aerobics classes every night at 8pm. Korea is so awesome sometimes.

More posts will come soon about teaching, my students, travelling and Japan!

The Beginning

Hey all! After being here for almost a month, I figured it was time to get this blog started. I have so many stories to tell already--some shocking, and some even scary, but mostly just hilarious. After the first few posts, I think this is going to be pretty much pictures and funny anecdotes, so bear with me for now!

Let's start with the very first thing I saw upon my entrance into the Republic of Korea...

That would be a Korean Karaoke bus, complete with full-fledged karaoke machine, purple silk window curtains, and neon lights lining the aisle. Not a bad wake up at 5:30am!

This bus took us to my new home, Jeollanamdo Province. The most southern, poor, undeveloped province in SK, Jeollanamdo is known for its farming, seafood, and thousands of uninhabited islands off the miles of coastline. You are probably expecting, as I did so many months ago, a land of rice fields and pig farms. But alas, this is Korea, where the words "poor" and "undeveloped" hold different meanings completely. Our orientation was held in the city of Gwangju, population 1.4 million. As the capital city of Jeollanamdo, Gwangju is host to many a bar, restaurant and HomePlus (aka Korean Walmart x3). For about a week, we got to explore this great city in our off time. One night, some teachers from last year threw us a flip cup tournament party at a bar, which didn't mesh too well with an 8am field trip the next day... We even hit up a salsa bar a few nights, and as my friend Emilie is demonstrating here, the Koreans (men and women) LOVED dancing with us.

Our hotel in Gwangju was on the top of a big hill right in the city, so we had an amazing view from most rooms:

Orientation basically consisted of lectures every morning and afternoon on topics that ranged everything from Discipline and Lesson Planning to Korean Music and Teaching Games. There were about 75 people in my orientation group, and we ate every meal together at the hotel. This was a great first exposure to typical Korean food: lots of fish, LOTS of rice, and inconceivable amounts of Kimchi (google it). In just a few weeks, I've gone from tentatively pushing kimchi around on my plate to actually craving the stuff at every meal...yum.

Surprising Korean fact #1 (to me at least): Koreans love baseball. A lot. On our last night, we got to see the Gwangju team, the Kia Tigers, suffer a heartbreaking loss in the final inning.

Those two dashing men would be Shane and Chris, the two coordinators of my program, and two of the coolest Canadian middle-aged men I know. Ah, which brings me to...

Surprising Korea fact #2: Everyone here is Canadian. Everyone in my program, that is, not in the country. I knew I got my job through a Canadian recruiting agency, but it just didn't occur to me that I was going to be surrounded by "soorry's" and "eh's" for a year. I like them though!

More to come on my post-orientation life soon!