If anyone is looking…

So, it’s that time of year for our school to be looking for teachers for next year. I’ve already had a couple of people search for ‘Kids Club Masan’, and find this blog. This is an open invitation to anyone who is looking at our school to contact me at rossandnicole@gmail.com . I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Last year the teacher I replaced did the interviewing for the positions, but I’m not sure if they’ll do the same this year.

I’ve been slacking!

Hey everyone. I can’t believe how much I’ve been slacking on the blog in the past two months. There have actually been some pretty cool things that have happened, and I have every intention to post about them, like going to the bamboo forest and the sand festival. I promise I will! Ross and I have just been so busy lately. Up until 2 weeks ago I was doing my Special Education Part 1 additional qualification online (which I passed!) and now we’re preparing for open class this Saturday. All the parents are coming, as well as our director AND the director of another Kids Club, so everyone is feeling the pressure. After school we either have lots more work to do, or we’re just too burnt out to do much of anything but sit and watch TV.

Here are some highlights of the past few weeks -

• Ross had his birthday! YAY!!! Unfortunately it fell on a Thursday, so we didn’t really get to do anything too big for it, but we did manage to go out for dinner at Outback and see Super 8 at the theatre. Great movie, btw.
• Rachel and Justin came down for the weekend, to help celebrate Ross’s birthday. We had a super chilled weekend (even though we had open class for the Korean Kindergarten kids) and good times were had by all. Thanks Justin and Rachel for coming down to Masan!!
• We met a couple new people in the neighbourhood – Kyle just started working at ECC, and Alice is an EPIK teacher that teaches right up the road from us! We hang out with Alice quite a bit, she’s pretty darn awesome if I do say so myself. We haven’t really got a chance to hang out with Kyle yet, maybe soon? Who knows, with everyone’s schedules.
• We had to say bye to Maggie, which was sad cuz she is awesome, but at least she got to go home earlier then she expected and see her BF. Because no one was replacing her, we got her oven! Yeah, we have an oven! It’s awesome. We finally cleaned it out, and Ross made meatloaf last night, which was AMAZING. For those of you in North America, it might not seem like a big deal. But for those living in Korea, that’s HUGE.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. I promise once open class is over and our lives have returned back to the non-stressful way it was, I’ll be sure to provide you with pictures and stories of our big adventures. In the meantime, here’s one picture to tide you over.

This is all of us who went to the bamboo forest. It was a really fun day!

Anyways, there’s your teaser!

xo nicole

Ross’s visa, the whole story.

Now is the time to finally discuss all that happened with Ross’s Korean visa, with all the frustration, confusion, anger and finally relief.

Let me start by saying we ended up going to the consulate 7 times. A few of those times were unsuccessful because I forgot transcripts twice. That was my fault. I read the wrong page on the Toronto consulate’s website, and did not bring what was needed. Twice. Lesson learned there. The other times were because of the stupidity of the situation and the miscommunication between the consulate and Korean immigration.

After we submitted our visas, we were told it would be 5-10 business days before our visas would be issued. This was the first problem, because we were booked to fly out in 6 business days. We told her our predicament, and she said she would process them as soon as she could. This was nice to know that she was going to work hard on them. 3 business days later, Wednesday, Ross gets a call from the woman, saying that when she went to process his visa, the computer said that he would have to go to his home country of America in order for everything to work.

Now, this I could understand if this was his first visa. When you get your first Korean visa, you are supposed to get it from your home country so you can have an interview. After that, you should be able to get any subsequent visas from any country, as most people who get a second visa don’t end up going home but travel to Japan on a visa run. So this shouldn’t have been a problem.

We asked her what could be done about the situation, she said she didn’t know, but we should get the school to call immigration in Korea and have them change it in their computer system. I emailed our recruiter, Dylan, who by the way was WONDERFUL through all of this, and told him of the problem. He called the school, who called immigration, and we were told that it had all been fixed. The next day we called the consulate, but the result was the same – the computer still said that Ross had to go to America. Once again, an email was sent to Dylan, and the school called immigration, and by Friday we were beyond frustrated. We called the consulate again, and the woman was out of ideas. She said she didn’t know what was wrong, that he should be able to get his visa in Canada, but because of what the computer said she couldn’t process it or else she would lose her job if someone caught her. She said she needed a document from immigration in Korea that said it would be okay. Ross suggested she email immigration. She replied “I guess I could do that”. I mean, come on! She could have done that days ago! We were so angry, we went to the consulate that afternoon to pick up my passport with my newly pressed visa in it, and to question her in person. We were successful in getting my passport back, but unsuccessful in getting a solid answer out of her regarding what she was going to do.

I called Dylan and explained the conversation we had with her. He said he would talk to the school, and see what could be done. The problem was, was that it was already Saturday in Korea, and we were running out of time. On Monday, our director ended up physically going to immigration in Masan and making sure that the consulate and immigration were communicating via email. She was able to obtain a copy of the communication, which Dylan sent to us on Sunday night. (Yes, I know I just went back in time, gotta love the time difference.)

Monday in Toronto the consulate was closed for Family Day, so we were pressed for time because we were supposed to fly out Tuesday night. SO, Tuesday morning we got Robyn, who was our saving grace, to drive us downtown for our 6th trip to the consulate. We brought along a copy of the email Dylan sent us, and she said she would FINALLY be able to process the visa because of that piece of paper. I don’t know why she didn’t have a copy of her own, but oh well. Everything was going to work out. Except that we had to go back down for 4pm. Even though our flight was leaving 5 hours later, and we wanted to spend as much time at home as possible. *sigh* So back down to the consulate we went, getting there at 3:30, and was told to come back AT FOUR. Oops. A quick last visit with Ricky (who just so happens to live right down the street), and at 4:15pm Tuesday night, after almost a week of frustration, Ross had his visa in hand. THANK GOODNESS.

Now here comes the editorial. I am not say that the Toronto consulate was wrong, because the woman who issues the visas was just doing her job. I am also not saying that immigration was wrong, because in their system he was fine to get his visa in Toronto. I AM saying that there needs to be better communication between the two. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t have just emailed them in the first place, and I don’t know why there had to be a glitch in the system. I think that the time difference was working against us, because if we had been in even remotely a closer time difference the two might have been open at the same time and a phone call could have simply been made. On the other hand, the time difference was for us, because if the consulate had not been a day behind immigration, we might not have been able to get the copy of the email in time.

I just hope that the consulate and immigration could learn from this horrible mix-up, and end up  communicating better with each other next time.

I would like to thank the following people for their help in the process: Dylan, for all his back and forth between us and the school, and for all the phone calls he had to make to Canada, Robyn for driving us down there on Tuesday morning, Ricky for keeping us company while we were in the city, our director who had to make all those calls and the trip to immigration, and my mom and dad for keeping me level headed while all this was happening. Without them, we would not be in Korea. Thank you.

We made it!

After a 13 hour direct flight, a 5 hour layover, and another one hour flight, we finally made it to Masan on Thursday. Here’s our update!

- We met an awesome girl named Laura at the consulate while we were picking up Ross’s visa (finally! I still have to write about what happened, I’ll get to that), and she happened to be on both our flights, so we hung out with her. It was her first time going to Korea, so we were able to help her go through immigration and get food and such. Although I don’t think she needed that much help, she seemed so comfortable right away. She took a job in Busan, so we’re gonna be close and we’ll be able to hang out.

- We got to the school after our recruiter picked us up from the airport. Dylan has been so helpful with everything, and I would recommend him as a recruiter for anyone. He works for DFL Recruiting. Let me know if you want his contact.

- Our neighbourhood (Samgye) is kind of like a small suburb of Masan, with a much different feel then Songchon-dong in Daejeon. There are definitely more stores and taller buildings then in Songchon-dong, because SCD was all restaurants.  Hopefully soon we will meet more people in our area.

- Our school is very very nice, all wood with U-shaped desks and nice teachers. We didn’t teach at all on Thursday, the school let us unpack and rest and do what we needed to do.Vicki and Paul, the teachers we are replacing, took us around the neighbourhood, showing us where stuff is. I hope they’re able to come back to the area.

- We were super jetlagged, but we needed a sheet for the bed, so we ventured to Homeplus in the middle of the city, and ended up having to spend 60,000 won on a fitted sheet. *sigh* Too much money for something we could have got at home for $10, but oh well.

- We fell asleep at 6:30pm. I ended up waking up at 1:00am, thinking that it was 5:00am or something, but nope, it was 1. Didn’t get back to sleep until 4am. I still don’t think my internal clock is right…. woke up again at 7:30am.

- We taught on Friday for three hours. We shared our classes, and didn’t really teach – we just played a riddle game with them, and the Korean teachers helped to translate if the kids had trouble. It was interesting, and I think our kids are gonna be a lot of fun to work with.

- We headed out to Daejeon Friday night, taking a bus from Masan to Daejeon. It takes 2 hours and 20 minutes to get there, so it’s not such a bad trip. We slept the entire way. It was nice!

- Getting to see everyone in Daejeon has been the best thing about returning to Korea, I think. We ate dinner at the dalk galbi place beside Dada’s, then dropped our bags off at Kim and Bart’s, then headed to Dada’s for a drink, then went to Dunsan-dong to hang out. We didn’t last long there, because we were super tired, but we got to see a lot of people which was super awesome. Made me feel like we were home.

- Today we went on a walk, and got accosted three times by kids, saying ‘hi!’ and ‘nice to meet you!’ and ‘what’s your name?’. Made me feel like a super star. LOL

- Dinner tonight will be at the smoke house, then we’re gonna head back to Masan tonight so tomorrow we can go food shopping and relax before our week starts.

And that’s it! That’s what has happened so far. No pictures, because we’re not shooting pics with our digital cameras, we’re using our new lomography cameras. So we have to get the film developed. But that’s okay, because the pictures will be wonderful. I will try to post pics ASAP though, so everyone can get a feeling of what it’s like in Masan.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!! Miss everyone at home already….

xoxoxoxo nicole

30 days to go

Happy Halloween everyone! Right now, everyone is getting ready to go trick or treating (unless you did that on Saturday), preparing dinner, watching Sunday afternoon TV… I should be sleeping. It’s almost 6am Monday morning, but this is what I get for A) taking a nap in the afternoon and B) going to be earlier then usual. I’m awake, so why not write a little on the fact that we, as of November 1st, only have 30 days to go on this wonderful Korean adventure of ours.

I still can’t believe we’re so close to being finished. It seems like only a few days ago we arrived, scared and nervous, to the Incheon airport, only to be shepherded onto a bus to take us to our unknown destination in Daejeon. I could swear it’s only been a month since we stayed at that hotel down the road, waiting for our apartment to become ours. And it seems like only yesterday that we met all our wonderful friends and had our incredible adventures. Okay, maybe it seems like longer, but the time really has gone by SO fast.

Both of us have learned so much this year. I’ve pretty much gotten over my fear of speaking to people I don’t know (ex: store clerks, information desk workers, etc.) which is good for my confidence. I have learned that I can make friends anywhere I go, and it’s easy to talk to people when you know what to say. Knowing what to say is the hard part. I think Ross has discovered more about his direction in life – to be a professional photographer. He’s become so interested in it, even more so then before we left for Korea, and I think taking pictures is what he wants to do with his life. He’s even re-registered www.rosslace.com, in hopes that he’ll make his website and gain some interest.

There’s still so much we want to do in Korea, which is why we want to come back. Except that our goal is to live on Jeju-do, which is the large island that some compare to Hawaii as far as temperatures and such. So if we’re on the island next year, we probably won’t be visiting the main land much, and that’s alright with us. But before I leave, I have to see the bamboo forest. And I have to have one more good party with my friends. (Not gonna get drunk though, after this weekend I’m never getting drunk again.) And I want to have one of the best teaching months I’ve ever had, so my kids will remember what an awesome teacher I am.

Wow, I’m kind of rambling. I guess that’s what happens at 6:00am. I should try to go back to bed, now that I’ve had a Halls to calm my sore throat and typed a little to get everything off my mind. Before I go, one quick story about yesterday. We were on our way to Home Plus Express, when we heard drum music coming from the park. We decided that we were going to go and investigate. Turns out that there was a festival of some sorts happening, and at the moment a Korean traditional drum group from a Yuseong high school performing Pungmul. It had beautiful drums and wonderful dancers and it’s so interesting to watch. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t have a camera, otherwise I would have great pictures to put up. Anyways, one of Ross’s students, Nicky, was there, and her mother is a friend of ours, and she told us to come sit with her. After the drum performance, the announcer stepped out in front of the crowd, and of course started to speak in Korean, and the one word I could pick out was ‘chingu’, which means friend. Turns out, he was talking about us. Nicky’s mom told us that he was telling the crowd that we had just arrived from Incheon airport to see this festival, and that we were friends of the organizing committee, and that we were special guests. HA! Little did all those people know that we were just going to the grocery store.They even gave us presents! Turned out to be little blankets, but hey, a present is a present, right? I guess we do stand out in a crowd.

Anyways, I should go back to bed and try to get at least another hour of sleep. Mondays are always long days. I leave you with some pictures of our kids on Halloween – too cute!

See you all in 30 (or so) days!

xo nicole

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Once again, it’s been awhile…

With less then two months to go before we leave, I blog with a heavy heart. We haven’t been doing much other then working and trying to put together our applications for the public school program in Korea. It’s a long, arduous process that had us (me) stressing for the last few months, and even more so the last few weeks. Making sure the application was filled out perfectly, writing essays, getting our reference letters, taking our head shots…

Well, we applied last week on Friday, got confirmation of our applications being received and starting the initial process on Monday, and sadly got denied for the program on Wednesday.

It was a hard email to receive, the denial letter. We were both upset, me more so then Ross, just because this is something that we have wanted for a long time. The public school system has better hours, longer holidays, and more opportunities for after school extra curricular money. I cried for a little while, but after talking to my mom and my friend Rachel, I calmed down and realized that a) it’s not the end of the world, and b) we now have far more opportunities then we ever thought possible.

Where should we go? Should we stay in Korea? Should we go to another country? Should we stay in Canada, or try our hand in the US? What should we do?

Not getting into the public school system has also allowed us to not stress over background checks and getting our degrees apostled before we leave Korea. We can enjoy these last 50+ days in Daejeon with our friends, having fun and hanging out as much as we can. We also have a LOT of packing to do – we have acquired so much stuff over the past year – honestly, I don’t know what to do with it all! Now that we are unsure of our future destination, we can’t leave anything in Korea. Granted, we’ll probably be back, just because the money is SO good, so we might pack up things like kitchen stuff and electronics that will only work in Korea, leave it with a friend, and if we don’t come back then they can use the stuff or mail it to us wherever we end up.

The month of September and last week have been really stressful, but since Wednesday I’ve felt very liberated. I feel like things will work out for us, because they always do. We always seem to make it through – we’re just awesome like that.

This weekend (tomorrow most likely) I plan on posting pictures of recent events, especially our field trip to the park with our kiddies, and the Baekje festival from last weekend.

Have an awesome Friday everyone!!

xo nicole

Saturday afternoons are for being lazy

I’m about to leave in a few minutes, but I figured I would just write briefly about stuff.

- Last weekend we went to a festival near our house at the local historical park Dongchundang. Here are some pics! (The green pancake looking things were good, the brown rice was better, but the tea was the best!)

- Brittany, our coworker, is apparently no longer working with us. Not sure the details, but we have a new coworker – her name is Young, but the kids know her as Taylor, since we already have a Young teaching at our school. She is Korean, but moved to Mississippi when she was 11. So she’s got an awesome southern accent and is a lot of fun to hang around with.

- Next week is Chuseok, which is the Korean Thanksgiving. This means we get 3 1/2 days off of school. When we first started working at Swaton, we thought we would get a whole week, but things at hagwons change fast, and you have to be flexible. So at least we get Friday morning off too. I think we’ll be traveling to Seoul to do some cultural stuff with Kim and Bart and whoever else wants to come along.

- Tomorrow we are going to Everland, the super large amusement park in Korea. It has the world’s steepest wooden roller coaster. I can’t wait!

Here are some pics of our kids at school – Ross took the ones with the fisheye, I took the other ones. They’re dressed in hanbok, the Korean traditional dress, because of Chuseok.

Enjoy!

xo nicole

Students at school

It’s Children’s Day in Korea, which means that we get a day off from school! But it is also a time to think how great children are. One neat thing that happened this week, it was really cool on Monday because I brought the laptop to school and my mom got to Skype with some of my kindergarten kids! So, in honour of Children’s Day, here are some of our cute Korean students at school.

Clover class playing dance freeze

Clover class again. Chelsea is the one with the hand glasses. This picture tells a lot about her, because I told them all to jump. She did not.

Colouring. This was after we read a book called “Water Please” and painted with water slightly tainted with blue.

After painting. From L- R: Chelsea, Betty, Jenny, Angel, Joyce, Luis, Jade

Rose class, minus Tiffany (who was sick that day). We made a pizza after reading “Let’s Make A Pizza”. The ingredients they put in the book were onions, ham and corn. We had cheese, ham, green pepper, chocolate and potato chips. Yes, chocolate and potato chips. From L – R: Kevin, Vivian, Jean and Colin

Colin. He’s kinda crazy.

Jasmine, in my American Textbook class. She was in my kindergarten class, but graduated in March.

Jenny and Rania in my GT4 class. (Now my Brainstorm 4 class.) Rania is Colin’s sister.

Alika, in my FO5 class.

FO3.

A long awaited post

I haven’t blogged in soooo long. This will probably be quick, because we have company, but I can at least put up some pics of what’s been going on. These events include: the strawberry field/greenhouse with the school, opening day of the Hanhwa Eagles baseball team, and the cherry blossom festival in Daejeon. Here we go.

These are some of our students at the strawberry field. It was actually a series of greenhouses, but it allows Koreans to produce strawberries in the middle of winter. Our kids are wearing their gym uniforms – they all look so cute in their green pants and yellow sweatshirts!

This is the greenhouse we were able to walk through. We got to pick the strawberries right off the vine! They were so tasty. Too bad Ross couldn’t have any, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re allergic.

When I got the names of my students in my Clover class, before they arrived, I thought I would have 4 girls  – Jenny, Betty, Angel and Jade. Turns out, two of them were boys. Meet Angel and Jade.

This is after the students got to pick strawberries off the vine. They got to squish LOTS of strawberries to make into jam. I got to take some jam home, it was delicious. Even though little hands were in it. It was boiled down, it’s okay.

Two of my old students who are now in Ross’s class, Luci and Sally. They’re two of my favourite students.

And this little one is named Chelsea. I got to name her, and because she was so cute, she got my cousin’s name. She can be a little terror though. She knows no English, and she loves to run out of the classroom, so when I call her back into class she laughs and continues to run away from me. But she’s SO cute, I can’t help but smile, which makes it worse.

The video is of the kids saying hello in Korean. Whenever one of the foreign teachers speaks in Korean, our students are shocked and want us to say more. So before I took this video, I walked into the playroom with all the kids and said ‘Anyeonhaseyo’ and got the biggest reaction ever out of them. I tried to get them to give me the same reaction, but no such luck. They’re still cute though. (At the end of the video, you can sort of catch me saying ‘I’ll go get her’ because Chelsea had run out of the room and was missing.)

Now on to the baseball game.

Daejeon’s team is the Hanhwa Eagles. This is their mascot. An eagle. (duh.)

They have little seating areas for food so you don’t have to eat at your seat. It’s pretty nice. All the seats (except for the special ones) are general seating, so you can pick your own seats. This seems weird, considering movie theatres are assigned seats here.

The fan section. Also watch the movie. I refer to it as the visitors section. Clearly it’s not.

Now onto the Cherry Blossom festival in a part of Daejeon called Sintanjin. Matt, Ross and I went today. This is a little bit of what we saw.

These horses move when you squeeze the green things. I have a video I will upload soon. I just really like this picture.

There was soooooo much street food. The pot on the left has shells that you suck out the stuff inside, and the pot on the right has silk worms. Both are gross. But I have tried one. Can you guess? (Hint – it’s not the silk worms. That’s just too gross.)

One of the few cherry blossom trees that were actually in bloom. It was kind of disappointing. If they were all in bloom, it would have been BEAUTIFUL.

The coolest way to sell drinks EVER. I want a waterfall like that in my fridge.

Yet again more street food. Gross.

A little girl trying to walk on stilts. I have a video of whats going on around her too, it was a whole field of Korean games. It was really neat. I’ll upload that soon too.

It’s Tuesday

Today is Tuesday. I haven’t blogged for almost  a week. This is because, on the weekend, I was super sick. We went out Friday night, and in my stupidity, scratched my throat BAD. (Don’t ask exactly how. It’s not a nice story.) As a result of this stupid action, my throat hurt the entire weekend. It felt like I had a piece of glass stuck in the back of my throat. It made me miserable! We ended up going out for a bit on Saturday, to Indy again for dinner and then Martin’s birthday party, but left early. And we honestly didn’t do ANYTHING on Sunday. We didn’t leave the apartment. We watched 4 episodes of Heroes and Ross made Kraft Dinner, Spam and potatoes for dinner.

Yesterday, I felt even worse then I did on the weekend. I felt like I had the flu! By 2:00pm I was feeling a little better, but not 100%. I didn’t go to my K-Pop dance class, so I felt lazy, but when you’re not feeling well, the last thing you want to do is move. For dinner, though, Ross made the most amazing stirfry! He bought broccoli, eggplant, carrots, peppers, onions and used the chicken that we had, and made the most healthy and delicious meal we’ve had since we’ve been here. I love that my husband can cook!

So, yeah. Life here is pretty boring. The kids at school are good, Luci came back so that made me VERY happy, and my Clover kids (the ones who are completely new to the school) are doing very well. Everything at school is getting back to normal. This weekend I’m hoping to get my hair cut somewhere, because I need one, and Ross needs one even more. Also, there is a festival somewhere that Elisa wants to go to, so we might look into that. We’re saving a lot of money by not doing much this month, though, which is pretty awesome. We’re already halfway through the month and we haven’t spent NEARLY as much as we did last month at this time. One more quiet weekend and we’ll have saved more then half our paychecks. I love this country and it’s cheapness.

Anyways, I’m at school, and I am going to prepare a flower craft for my Clover kids. I tried it last week with my Rose class, but it took far too long to complete, so I’m going to cut out a whole crap load of petals for them to just glue on. Hopefully it will turn out!

xoxo nicole