Shut.Down.Everything

"President Madagascar! There's a man coughing in Brazil!"
"SHUT.DOWN.EVERYTHING"

Well, the past few weeks have gone by in a blur. Aaron had caught a cold, which means that inevitably, it was passed on to me. I lasted 4 days before I succumbed. I was sick for around 2 weeks, with the last week consisting only of constant coughing. I ended up taking 3 days off from work as I had not been sleeping well due my cold and from evil mosquitoes. Neither Aaron nor I caught the H1N1 flu as we did not even have a fever, but the cold left us both feeling exhausted and weak. It was definitely not a fun time for us as neither of us had the energy to clean, make dinner, or even go outside.
Braving the outdoors the Saturday after I caught my cold, Aaron and I decided to go volunteer at the animal shelter. Aaron decided to sleep in longer, so I went at the usual time. However, it was still too early for me to get out of bed and I ended up feeling worse afterwards. It was back to bed for me for the rest of the weekend.

The H1N1 hype is increasing and when I was sick, many of my teachers asked me to go to the hospital. Apparently the hospital is the same as a clinic in Canada. However, after my experiences with doctors in Canada, more specifically, in Nova Scotia, I stayed at home to nurse my cold. I am sure it would not have made any difference anyway. As Aaron and I work at rural schools, there are less students getting the flu than if we had worked in Daegu. None of my students have had the flu and only 3 of Aaron's students from Goryeong middle school were out with the flu last week. Last week, the Korean government had been deciding whether or not to close all the schools for two weeks, but as of today, only a few schools in Seoul have been closed. I highly doubt there will be any school closures in my area. However, the problem is that teachers come in from Daegu to teach in the country, so their children go to the schools in Daegu and transferrence occurs from there.

Surprisingly, even with the H1N1 warnings and the cancellations of so many school festivals and fieldtrips, Ugok middle school went to Gyeongju for a fieldtrip last Friday. I'm glad I had the opportunity to attend and was extremely excited as Aaron and I haven't traveled much since we got here. We visited Bulguksa, a famous temple (I'll post pictures when I remember). We also went to a writing center that was opened by a famous novelist and a poet, a Buddhist statue in a cave, and a music box museum. The fall scenery was amazing in the mountains and there is a lot of old temples and shrines in Gyeongju as it was the capital of the Shilla Dynasty.

November brings about a new month and also a new school schedule for me and Aaron. He has taken over my position at Gaejin middle school while I have been moved to Dasan Middle school on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I'm a bit disappointed as I really enjoy working at Gaejin Elementary and now my time there has been dropped down to one day. Today is my first day at Dasan Middle school. I am not really sure what to think yet. It's going to be really cold in the winter because I need to take a bus to Dasan, then wait for the school bus to come pick up the students at the bus terminal.

Next week, Aaron and I will be going to Seoul to visit my friend Scarlett whom I met in Nova Scotia. We're going to all go to a friend's wedding on Saturday, then Aaron and I need to go look for some winter clothing that may fit us (more especially him). The sizes we have seen in Daegu are ridiculously small.

It is almost time for winter vacation, so Aaron and I are planning to go to Hokkaido... not sure how we will go about it yet....

Working at KAPS

Last week, Aaron and I spent our Saturday at the local animal shelter (KAPS) in Daegu. We went to the dog shelter, which is on the 3rd and 4th floor of a building. One of the veteran volunteers, Emma, met us outside at 10am and we proceeded to go upstairs to start the day. Our first task was finding a shaggy dog, or at least one that required clipping so that Emma could show us how to clip. The first dog Emma chose was a shih tzu. It had to have its rear end shaved, then got washed and then was fully clipped if needed (mainly around its ears). Aaron and I then chose a schnauzer (the label on her cage said yorkie, but it wasn't). It was quite hairy around its ears and had a bobby tail @_@ I felt somewhat bad because it was so happy to see us and then we ended up washing and shaving its tail off. Emma had to shave the rest of the tail because I somehow managed to clip it into a broom shape -.-;
We eventually ended up with a brown maltese puppy, which was surprisingly cute. She was a real scaredy cat when it came to anything but hugs. Unfortunately, she had an extreme case of mites to the point where she would cry out as she constantly scratched her ears and paws. I felt so bad for her and we had run out of something called BioKill (used to kill insects and mites), so Emma put shampoo on her ears until we came back from lunch with Sunnan, the woman from the cat shelter, who gave us some powder to help against the mites and brought a botel of Biokill. We had to wash the puppy and its cagemate (who was starting to get it too), and she kept crying as we washed her. The entire time! Not only that, but she also tried to lick the shampoo~ She was a crazy puppy :P Aaron sat with her in his lap in front of the heating fan while Emma combed the mites out of her ears. She eventually burrowed in Aaron's lap and tried to sleep while randomly jerking up to bite a leg or scratch an ear.
After we put her back, we decided to walk some of the larger dogs. There were two jindos, an afghan, and an oversexed cocker spaniel. I walked the larger of the two jindo dogs (they look a bit like shiba inus @_@) and she was really cute. Well, until we walked outside and she took a giant poop in the parking lot. Aaron was walking the afghan, but it was too skinny and managed to escape its lead, so once Emma caught it, she decided to walk it. We walked around Duryu park, but it was really crowded for a Saturday. There was some sort of event going on at the cultural center. Aaron's new dog (the smaller jindo), had runny issues, so apparently it was leaking randomly during the entire walk. A random man walked up to me and said something along the lines of "mal upda", but I had no clue what he was talking about, so like I always do, I smiled at him and walked away. However, he followed me and eventually caught up to Emma and was talking to her. She managed to figure out that he said the dog was bleeding or something (the female dogs were in heat). He continued to follow us until we found Sunnan. She said that he wanted to take the dog home with him. When she told him she was afraid he would eat the dog, he promised he would eat other dogs, but not this one @__@
Coming back from the walk, our job was to wash my jindo while Emma and the other volunteer shaved down a yorkshire terrier that looked like it had gone through a washing machine. Our job was quite difficult as the jindo did not seem to like water. It was getting quite chilly (it was around 5:30 by then), so we decided to end early and just pick out all the thorns from its coat. By the time we had finished, it had random blotches of white where the shampoo had worked, but other parts of it were still grey. Maybe next time we'll get to it fully....

Changing of the seasons

It's finally October. Apparently blogspot has been disabled on all of the school computers (it really did not help that I somehow ended up opening 20 tabs of my blog at one of my schools -.-;), which is why I have not been writing. So much has happened as of late! The seasons are changing and I notice the leaves of the persimmon tree are starting to fall off. The forests are starting to shed their leaves, distributing yellow, red, and brown leaves everywhere. The rice fields are starting to turn yellow and I think the harvest time will be near. Maybe by next week, the fields will be barren!

We found a Costco in Daegu. It's a bit far from the subway station, so we took a taxi last time, but there is so much Western food there. It's almost like the Costco back home. A little bit of a reminder of home.

We have also started volunteering at the local animal shelter. It is separated into the cat and dog compound. The cats live in an abandoned house and a backyard, but the dogs live on the 3rd and 4th floor of a building in cages. Aaron and I have decided that we will walk, wash, and possibly groom the dogs as they require the most attention. Apparently a lot of owners just let their dogs go into the street when it becomes too expensive to take care of them. One of the dogs now at the shelter was found in a forest. It was left to die with a wire wrapped around its neck! Understandably, it is afraid of us and we only saw it peeking around the corner before it ran away to hide again.

The food here is amazing. We have been going to grill restaurants and ordering randomly off of the menu as we had no clue what most of the words meant. However, I wrote down some of the menu items and had them translated. There was a somewhat embarassing moment when the owner grabbed the menu from me because he saw me copying it. He probably thought I was trying to steal some trade secret or something? Anyways, there are two types of grill restaurants where we have been to. The first one has a metal slate that is heated where the meat is cooked on, and the other one is a round metal plate with holes and is heated by coals underneath. Both places have about the same menu. At one point, we ordered something that we had no idea what it was. It looked like the backbone of something small and I thought it tasted like eel. However, when I asked one of my teachers about the translation, they said it was called hagfish.... Look that up @_@ Oddly enough, Aaron does enjoy it, but I find it tastes somewhat weird.

Chuseok weekend, which was a 4 day weekend, was really relaxing for Aaron and I. We spent most of the time at home. It was too difficult to travel around as everyone was doing the same thing, trying to get back to their home towns. For Chuseok, people go home to their families and home towns (or wives go to their husband's families) to spend time together and visit their ancestors' graves. The women prepare a lot of food to eat and to take to the graves to be blessed. I was invited by my co-teacher, Mrs. Kim from Gaejin Elementary school, to join her family in the preparation of food. I got to meet her family and helped prepare a lot of tasty food :P Afterwards, her mother-in-law packed containers and containers of food for me to take home so that Aaron could try. There is still a lot sitting in the fridge because we cannot finish it all.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Koreans really take recycling to a whole new level. In order to throw away garbage, we need to buy specific garbage bags from grocery stores in a pack of 10 for around $3. However, almost everything can be recycled: plastics, paper, cardboard... pretty much anything that has a recycling logo on it. All that needs to be done is to place them in a netted bag! Food waste can be recycled by placing it in a red bucket with a strainer inside and a lid. We need to also buy a tag from the grocery store in order to let food waste collection know that it needs to be emptied. Collection comes quite frequently (at least twice a week), so nothing ever really piles up.

It is quite cheap to buy food at the open market, but also cheap to eat out. The other day we went to a 막창 (place that serves intestines) by accident. We ended up getting cow intestines stew (sort of like a hot pot). It was chewy and really weird, but everything else was quite tasty ^_^ The hotpot plus rice per person was ~$8+$1. Then we ordered a pop and potato pasta (sort of like gnocchi... I don't know what the exact translation is) and it cost another $1 each. In total, we spent ~$20 eating out, tax and tip included. Dinner always comes with side dishes, so we always have to make sure we do not order more than we can eat.

Yesterday night, we went to downtown Daegu to listen to one of the English teacher's(Bryan's) band. We ate out at an Italian restaurant and each had a type of spaghetti and a German potato salad (which was a vinagrette salad with a potato sliced in half that had sauce on it). Dessert was included, but the dessert here is not what someone would expect. Dessert here is normally a drink (coffee, tea) or some sort of Korean food that is not a sweet. The dinner was extremely filling. I could have done without the salad as the spaghetti was more than enough.
Bryan's band was a hip-hop-like band and it was better than I expected. We ended up leaving early though as a lot of people were smoking and I was starting to feel unwell. I tried a non-alcoholic drink called Cinderella, which was made up of grenadine and pineapple juice. Last night was the first night we took a taxi and it went quite well. The taxi had a DVD player that played some Korean talk show during the drive. The taxi driver understood Aaron and we made it home safe ^-^
Should get internet next week sometime, so hopefully I can post some pictures.

Where do you live?

Curious about where we live? You can find Aaron's and my apartment on Google Maps by typing in : 대구서부버스정류장 West Daegu Bus Station‎ . If you zoom in all the way, to the bottom left, there is a spot that says 푸른마을빌라 and that is our building... You can also just try to copy and paste the building name.
The schools I teach at are Gaejin 개진 and Ugok 우곡, so you can see the general area if you put those into Google Maps. The schools Aaron teach at are Goryeong 고령 and Sungsan 성산.

The Beginning

Things have finally settled down and Aaron and I have started teaching this week. My entire weekend was spent going to PC bangs (PC rooms) to finish my four lesson plans for Monday and Tuesday. Aaron did not have to plan (or at least he was not told to plan) any lessons, so he partially helped me and surfed the web. The PC bangs are used to play games at such as Counterstrike, Maple Story, etc., so there was no Microsoft Word. I ended up using Prezi for my Canadian culture class, which is quite difficult to use compared to Powerpoint and not as versatile. All my rushing and planning was to naught as I ended made my presentations too long and have yet to actually finish any presentation. In fact, I had to split my lessons into two separate lessons as it was a bit too much for my class.
Today, in my grade 1 class, two of the four students were sick, so we canceled the lesson and ended up watching an episode of Fringe that had Korean subtitles. I'm not complaining ^-^
Tonight, there is a teachers meeting dinner at a restaurant somewhere (I am not sure where as I do not get told everything).

I brought maple cookies to school today and it seemed to be a big hit. Everyone liked the cookies and a teacher asked me if I knew whether or not I could buy it here in Korea (I have no clue!). I think I will ask my mother to send us more cookies since we did not bring enough (we had no clue we would be teaching at so many schools). For lunch, everyone is always telling me to eat more (I really can't@_@). They think I don't take enough food even though I do already eat a lot. Today, one of the teachers even brought more food over to me and put it on my tray. As for eating lunch, everyone pays around 1,000 to 2300Won to eat cafeteria food in schools. In Ugok, everyone sits at the same table, but is separate by gender in half. At Gaejin middle school, I sit with the female middle school teachers while at the elementary school, I sit with my co-teacher and her student. Aaron apparently sits with the female teachers in one school while sitting with his co-teacher and students in another.

Yesterday, we ended up going to a restaurant called Tudari and Aaron ordered for us by pointing out pictures (we love it when they have pictures on menus). We ate a bunch of meat and veggies on skewers although we were not really sure what most of the meat was-.-;

I finally took the bus with Aaron yesterday and today. It was really crowded and instead of everyone lining up, seniors rush to the doors and the rest of us gather behind them. I had my bag held by someone who was sitting. It is common in Korea for someone who is sitting to ask a person standing if they want their bags held.

Day at the market

The past few nights for dinner, we have had nothing but meat to eat for dinner (mainly pork). Having had more meat the past few days than I have had the past year (Being vegetarian is very difficult in Korea, especially when we do not know what the menu items are and when we do not want to offend our hosts), Aaron and I have been yearning for fresh vegetables. As Aaron was predisposed yesterday with two dinners, I was left alone at home. I decided to try my hand at laundry. My experience consisted of me pressing a big button to turn on the machine, then putting the laundry detergent into the washing machine along with the clothes, then pressing an even larger button to start. The machine showed the time to finish, so I ended up falling asleep while I was waiting. After I woke up, I did the best I could to hand them on a hanging drying rack that was too small. We'll need to go buy a new drying rack with more space.

After hanging everything to dry, I decided to attempt the market. There is a large market one block from our apartment that spans a couple blocks or so. They sell clothing, seafood, pharmacy products, fruit, vegetables, and a whole lot of other stuff. There are even street vendors that sell cooked food. Ugok, where my main middle school is situated, is known for their watermelons, so I was wandering around the streets looking for watermelon. The season is almost over, so it was very diffiult to find. I did eventually find a watermelon, which cost 5000won (~$5) and also bought some grapes for 3000won (~$3). The watermelon here is a lot sweeter and heavier than a watermelon of the same size I would buy in Canada. It was very difficult trying to bring the watermelon home because I had to walk for 5 min or so carrying the really heavy watermelon on a string (not really sure how I should describe it, but it's ingenius :P).

Gaejin Elementary school is quite a lot of fun. I really like the kids and they are really cute ^_^ The classes are really small though. It is somewhat difficult to communicate with some of them as they are at all different levels of English and some do not know what I am saying hen I ask them questions. However, they help each other, so that does help things. I am in charge of greetings and storytime at the elementary school, which is quite a lot of fun even though the students are still quite shy of me. My co-teacher, Ms. Kim, is really nice and quite fluent in English so we can have long conversations.