Transitions

Hello everyone!

First, let me apologize for the lack of blog posts. As you may remember, my original laptop died during orientation due to the humidity in the dorm building. The good news is that I now have a functioning laptop that will last me through my grant year (fingers crossed!). The bad news is that it took nearly six weeks to replace, so I haven't been able to update my blog. Therefore, this post will be a brief recap of important highlights that occurred during the remainder of orientation, and I will also talk about my transition into my home stay placement and the start of my classes as a high school English teacher! I may also copy and paste excerpts of events from my friends' blogs, and I will include links to their pages if you would like to check them out too!

So, right around the time that my laptop died, the nearly 80 of us ETAs were finding out what city we would be moving to for the remainder of our grant year (week 3 of orientation). It was a very exciting yet nerve-wrenching time for us, as we had filled out preference forms beforehand and want to be close to all of our friends. I was very happy with my placement - the only thing I requested was to be in a rural area and near to transportation to larger cities. In general, it is pretty rare for an ETA to request a rural placement, so the committee had little difficulty in placing me. I found out that I would be living in Jeollanam-do (province name, like "Illinois" would be in the USA), and my city name is Gwangyang-eup. Here is a map for you to see, and a picture with my fellow Jeollanam-do crew!

After finding out our placements, we only had a few weeks left of orientation, which the main highlights consisted of a trip to Seoul (my first time!) and our Fulbright Talent Show.

To put it simply, Seoul was amazing!!! I don't think I could live there because I would be so overwhelmed by the endless amount of things you can do there, but it is great for weekend trips and meeting up with friends. While we were in Seoul, we visited the Fulbright Office, graduated from our Korean Language Course at Korea University, and we also took a trip to the border of North and South Korea (the Demilitarized Zone). Here are a few snapshots from the weekend!

I want to express my gratitude toward my Korean professors throughout the six weeks of orientation. They have been so helpful not only in the classroom, but outside of class as well. They were so patient and willing to communicate with us about anything during our training. I would not feel as prepared to live in Korea as I do now if I did not have such wonderful teachers - so thank you, 이승훈 and 김민혜 for all that you do - thank you for your inspiration and motivating me to be the best that I can be!

My Korean class with our professors... I will miss them dearly!

Seoul! Ferry ride

I did it! I graduated from Korean class. 

Hanging out in what is almost North Korea

Want to know how I know my Korean class is the most awesome class ever? For graduation, each class had to come up with a skit and/or activity to present to everyone (and Mrs. Shim, the director of Fulbright Korea!). So, our class decided to create a music video and rewrite the lyrics to the song "Talk Dirty to Me" by Jason DeRulo. My friend Leanndra and I were put in charge of lyric-writing, which I was thrilled about! We named our song "Teach Hangul to Me" (Hangul is the name of the Korean alphabet). Here is the video!!! It is all in Korean of course, but you can still laugh at our funny gestures if you don't understand the lyrics. Enjoy!!

After Seoul weekend, we were scrambling to prepare the Talent Show - we decided to go with an SNL theme. The Talent Show highlighted inside jokes between the staff, ETAs, and our Jungwon University lifestyle. It was a great way to end our orientation together - but also bittersweet. I sang a song to the tune of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from the movie Mulan, and changed the lyrics to relate to our experiences at Jungwon. I will try and upload a video when I get access! Other performers included musical acts (a'capella, piano solos, duets, the whole range), K-pop dancing, choreographed dancing, and more. It was a blast!


Fast forward to moving out of Jungwon and moving to Gwangyang:

Almost three weeks ago, I met my Fulbright Co-teacher for the first time when she came to pick me up at Jungwon. I was immediately overcome with joy as I saw her bright smile walk up to me with a big bouquet of roses to give me. We took a five hour car ride home together, and I met my home stay family! They are the cutest family ever. I have two host brothers, one in high school and the other in middle school, and my host mom and host dad. My host dad is a government worker, and my host mom owns a gas station. I am so happy to be with them, and they have helped me transition into my placement at Gwangyang very easily. Here are some pictures of my family and the view I wake up to every day!

For the job side, I am teaching at an all boys high school! Upon hearing this news, I was actually very excited. I am super active and full of energy, so I think this matchup is a good one. Two weeks into teaching and I can say that it is a good fit. Those boys are a riot (in a good way)! It will definitely be a challenging yet fun and interesting year for me. I feel well-prepared after having some teaching experience before arriving in Korea! I teach between 500-600 students each week, so it is a struggle learning names, but I am determined to know their names by the end of the year. They have a wide range of interests, personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and other qualities about them that I look forward to learning more about. I will be sure to keep you all updated on any funny stories that happen during my year, as I am sure there will be plenty.

I don't want to make this post too long, so I will stop for now and update again later with some more finite details now that I can update more frequently. Please check out all of my friends' blogs by clicking the link below if you want to hear more about any experiences that I had amidst my laptop breakdown.

Fulbright Korea Blogroll 2014-2015

Until next time, everyone!
Hillary