Hello everyone! It’s been a while, and at some point I will go back to make a post with some detail explaining the in-processing process from September-December, as well as link resources and blogs that are much more helpful than I could ever hope to be. It’s been a busy four months, and while I certainly had time to update this blog, I will be the first to admit I was usually too overwhelmed with paperwork to even think about writing something related to Fulbright. I needed time where I wasn’t working on anything grant and/or paperwork related.
I’m hoping that now that I’m here in Korea and in the swing of things I will be able to hold myself more accountable with this blog. My goal is to post once a month, but I’d love to post more than that! During orientation so far, I’ve taken lots of fun photos and I’m sure there will be more photo opportunities. I’m hoping that all these photos will motivate me to post more often.
Departure & Arrival: January 8th-9th
Me before the flight. I flew out of the Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Airport. I had a direct flight from Minneapolis to Incheon, so it was only 13.5 hours of travel. I was also lucky enough to be flying with four other people from the Twin Cities, and most of us were able to meet up before the flight. We weren’t sitting together on the plane, but it was nice to have people to wait with before and after the flight.
Speaking of the flight, it went pretty well! I don’t mind long stretches of travel, so the 13.5 hours weren’t too difficult to manage. I didn’t take any pictures of the food, which was overall not bad, but I did take this picture of our flight path.
We left Minnesota at ~10:30 AM Central Time and arrived in Korea at 3:30 PM local time. I didn’t sleep on the flight at all, other than about an hour where I tried (key word being tried) to doze. When that didn’t work, I gave up and completed all of Plants VS Zombies. Even still, the flights didn’t feel too long and I still had lots of energy when we arrived at the Incheon airport.
The energy did not last long after we arrived at the airport. Despite an airport americano, I was very quickly zoning out and just ready to sleep. Unfortunately, us Minnesotans beat KAEC (Korean-American Education Commission) to the airport, so we were waiting for a while.
Thankfully once KAEC arrived we were able to get on the 1st of four buses for our 2 hour ride to Jungwon University.
We were all wearing masks at this point provided by KAEC to prevent the spread of Covid-19 or other diseases. Everyone was really tired after long flights too, so despite the bus looking ready for a party, most people (me included) were trying our best not to fall asleep.
I managed to stay awake enough to capture a few pictures of the trip to Jungwon University. This is from the beginning of the drive, so enjoy what was my first sight of Seoul after arriving in Korea (at least my first sight in a couple of years.
Jungwon University (중원대학교) & Orientation
Jungwon University is a small campus, but very cute and easy to navigate. I received my roommate information as I was on the bus from Incheon International Airport to Jungwon University. Since I have no cell service, I wasn’t actually able to tell who my roommate would be until I arrived at the dorm and in the room that would be my home for the next 6 weeks of orientation.
My home for the next 6 weeks after unpacking.
I really lucky with my roommate! She’s super sweet and we both like to crochet and knit. She also has a great blog called From, Your Penpal! Here are some obligatory mirror roomie pics from the beginning of orientation:
Orientation was pretty much go go go as soon as we woke up on the 10th (the day after we arrived). We have 3 meals a day provided by the cafeteria on campus. The food is good and filling. But wow, I was not prepared for such a busy schedule. I won’t bore you too much with the details though. And honestly, I don’t remember everything that has happened in the last 2 & 1/2 weeks.
If you can’t tell, I’m writing this blog post quite a while after arriving in Korea, and so my recollection of events is blurry. In general, I wake up at 7am and study Korean until 8-8:30am. Then I go to get breakfast in the dining hall. After breakfast, I have Korean Language (KL) classes from 9am-1pm. Then it’s lunch until 2pm. From 2:10pm-4:20pm or 4:50pm we have Teaching Workshops and Cultural Workshops, which are focused on living and working in Korea and at Korean schools. Dinner is from 6pm-7pm. Then Monday-Thursday from 7pm-9pm there are optional KL office hours and supplemental lessons.
Weekends are a little more free, and where I tend to have time to explore the nearby town of Goesan-gun (괴산군). Usually I’m sitting in cafes and studying Korean.
Here are some highlights from my trips to Goesan-gun. Ft. fried chicken and fries with fellow ETA Faith. These pictures span most of orientation. At this point, I’m accepting that this blog post will no longer have a time line.
Hwacheon Ice Festival (얼음나라 화천 산천어축제): January 18th
We also had a cultural excursion to the Hwacheon Ice Fishing Festival. That was on Saturday, January 18th. All of the ETAs boarded two buses. We stopped at a rest stop about halfway to Hwacheon. To me, the drive wasn’t long enough to justify a stop, but I think my conception of distance is still messed up from my road trip from Minnesota to Alaska as a teenager. I got lots of fun pictures at the rest stop though!
One thing that I’ve been loving about Korea is the mountains. I forget how much I love mountains. But they really do make scenery that much more beautiful. Also, I’m wearing a giant puffer coat almost every day, but it hasn’t really been under 32 Fahrenheit. As someone from Minnesota (and someone who gets cold easily at that!) it really has been a warm winter.
Here is the rough road we took from Goesan-gun to Hwacheon. It’s about a 2 hour and 45 minute drive.
In Hwacheon we met the Mayor, who greeted us at a restaurant and had a meal set up for us. As a seafood fan, I was very satisfied with this food, and it was really cool to be greeted so warmly. We also took a picture with Santa and an Elf, which I don’t have a copy of (yet).
I’m very sorry for the half-eaten fish in the last photo. I forgot to take a picture before eating.
Another part of the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival was ice fishing. I had really good luck after about 20 minutes of nothing, and I ended up catching 5 fish. I even got a coupon to eat a fish for free because I’d caught some. Of course, I’d already had fish for lunch and was really full, but you can bet I still ate more fish.
We ended the day in Chuncheon (춘천시) the capital of the Gangwon Province, where we had dak-galbi (닭갈비), or spicy stir-fried chicken. Dak-galbi is a local dish in Chuncheon, and was invented there, so it was a treat! I’m still trying to like chicken, so this wasn’t my favorite thing that I’ve had in Korea, but the spiciness made it better.
Here are a couple more photos from the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival.
I found a coffee shop and got an iced americano. The heart straw was a big plus.
Also, there was a barehanded fishing competition. The picture I took of that is on the top right. It was fun to watch, especially knowing that I wasn’t the one in the freezing water. Although if I ever go back, I think I’d like to give it a shot!
Crochet/Knitting Club, Teaching Practicum, & Other Activities
I’ll start off this section with the most exciting thing. My roommate, Faith (from pictures from town and the airport), and I started a crochet/knitting club. During orientation we’ll be getting together hopefully once a week. I’ll try to keep how that goes updated if I manage to get another blog post out. (I promise I’ll try!)
I also had my first teaching practicum on the 23rd of January. I won’t bore you too much with that, but I can say that it went better than I expected. I think the lesson planning portion went pretty well, but I still need more practice actually teaching (and putting together power point presentations, which is decidedly my least favorite part of lesson design).
Of course, as soon as the teaching practicum with other ETAs acting as students was finished, we started preparing for the Fulbright English Program (FEP). This is a way for all of us ETAs to practice teaching with real students in an online English language camp. Each of us will teach a random level one 40 minute lesson, and some who volunteered will teach another 40 minute lesson for a different level. I am one of the people who volunteered to teach an extra lesson.
At this point, I have submitted my first draft for my first lesson plan, and I plan to submit a first draft for the second lesson plan tomorrow. This week (1/26-2/1) is the Korea New Year or Seollal (설날). This means that from 1/28-1/30 we will have no KL classes and be able to focus on lesson planning. I’m especially thankful for this because I want to make sure I’m planning engaging lessons for the very real Korean students that I will be teaching.
I also spent some time today (for reference, Monday 1/27) finishing up my speech that I will be giving next week in my KL class. I will be talking about the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I was especially motivated to finish my draft of the speech because my KL instructor said that she would be willing to look over any speeches sent to her on 1/27 and would send us feedback on 1/31.
One more fun thing; it snowed a lot today (1/27). It’s still warm compared to Minnesota, but the snow made me really happy, especially since it had been so brown. Here are some cute snow duck pics!
There’s probably a lot more that’s happened over orientation, but I think that’s where I’ll end it for this post! Thanks so much for sticking around for this long blog post that probably amounted to a lot of nothing. See you next time!
– Jena
P.S. I’ll put a bunch of other photos I took but couldn’t add to the main body of the post down here. Most of these were taken on campus, but some were taken in Goesan-gun as well.
Jena in Korea 