July was a
great month and we had many exciting times during the month. July saw a visit
from my mum, our first trip to Seoul and an amazing holiday to Jeju island
(more blog posts on Jeju to come soon).
A brief visit to Seoul
As part of
our teaching duties we had to go to Seoul to attend a day-long EBY Talking Club
training course. This meant we had to leave Jeonju at 5:30am on a Saturday
morning to catch an express bus to Seoul. Luckily one of Dean’s co-teachers
also had to attend the training so she could show us the way. The training was
at the EBY headquarters and there were only about 10 of us foreign teachers
(from all around the country). It was very relaxed and just involved some
Korean teachers giving talks on the syllabuses. It was much better than I expected as we were
given some good teaching tips and it definitely inspired me to try be a better
teacher and make my lessons more exciting. Another nice thing about the
training was that we got to speak to other foreign teachers who work for the
same franchise and compare our schools. Most of the other teachers were
American or Canadian. It seems Dean and I have a really good deal with the
running of our school. We kept the
contacts of the other teachers and may meet up with them in the future if we
are ever in their part of the country.
After our
training we headed to Itaewon to stay at my dad’s friend, Paul’s, house. His
whole family moved to Seoul and they have been there for 5 years. Itaewon is
the foreigner area in Seoul and it is filled with many westerners, embassies
and huge houses (the CEOS of Samsung and LG live there). It was so weird for us
to be there and see westerner families walking in the streets as well as be in
house that sort of resembled a typical South African house (it even had a
garden). Paul and his daughter Erin took
us to the Seoul Club for dinner. We had delicious hamburgers, a first since our
time in Korea. They then took us out to check out the bustling streets of
Itaewon. The streets are lined with trendy bars, pubs and restaurants and they
were full with people. We definitely saw the most foreigners and westerners we
had seen ever in Korea. There seemed to be people from all around the world as
we heard all sorts of accents and languages. We went to 2 pubs. One was the “Braai
Republic”. A pub/restaurant started by a South African man. It serves all sorts
of South African food. We were pleased to have some Savannahs, Castles, biltong
and amazing Amarula cheesecake. Being in Itaewon kind of made us wish that we
lived in Seoul. The place seems so alive and it’s really nice to not feel like
such an outsider. I can’t wait to go back there.
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| Braai Republic- looks like home |
The next
day, Paul very kindly took us for a brief tour around Seoul. We visited
Insadong, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the old Olympic stadium before we had
lunch in Gangnam and then headed back to Jeonju. I really enjoyed the weekend in
Seoul and appreciated all the home comforts. The small things like being with
dogs (Paul had 3), eating normal cheese and having Mexican food for lunch
reminded me of home.
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| Girls wearing traditional Hanbok clothing in Insadong. |
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| The main street of Insadaong. You can buy lovely trinkets, food and treats. |
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| Dean and Paul watching the performance on how to make the delicious Insadong traditional sweet Yong Su Yeom. Yong Su Yeom is a treat spun from fine threads of honey and it has a nutty filling. |
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| Dongdaemun Design Plaze from the outside. Bizarre looking building. The inside looks weirdly futuristic. |
Market Day
In July we
also had Market Day at our schools. This was a really fun day as we didn’t have
to work and the kids had a great time. On Market Day the children get to spend “money”
that they have earned for good behaviour, hard work etc on all sorts of treats.
Dean and I were in charge of the snack rooms. We also got spoilt with many treats and yummy
food. I was given iced noodles for lunch, a really strange meal but quite
refreshing.
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