MOUNTAINTOP PHOTOS

At the top

Our team

AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH

A week ago at 8am I stood on top of a mountain and shouted in my head "We lived on the medieval coast/ south of warrior kingdoms / in the ancient day of the winds / as they blew all things before them." The mountains spreading before me fulfilled every image of Asia I have dreamed or hoped to dream whether reading poetry or watching the films of studio Ghibli.


During orientation we've talked a lot about our goals for the upcoming year. What do we want to take away from our time in Korea? Where do we want to spend our energy? And one of the phrases that keeps coming up is personal growth. Yes, we're here to teach, but we're more than teachers. We're also people and we're here to live and to see how far life can take us.

Last Thursday when we saw the mountain we were planning to climb I never thought we would make it to the top. But then we made the halfway mark and I thought, I can do this, and suddenly we were there. There are so many ways to grow, but maybe nothing is more tangible than stretching your muscles and finding your way closer to the clouds. No wonder temples are so often built at the top of mountains, literally above the rollick and tumble of everyday life.

Personal growth has been on my mind a lot in the last few days as we filled out our placement request forms. These forms don't guarantee we'll be placed where we want — placement is complicated — but our preferences do carry some weight. So I had to consider, how do I want to grow? and where will I be able to grow the most? I found three main desires. First, for my students, I want to have time to get to know them outside the classroom as well as in the classroom. I want to have the freedom to teach club classes and camps. Second, for Korea, I want to become in some small way a part of this culture, by exploring the land, by continuing to study the language and hopefully, by taking up the study of Korean folk dance. Third, for myself, I want to develop discipline by writing, and stretch my comfort zone by traveling and meeting new people.

With those goals in mind I filled out my placement form. Environment preference: mountainous.

AT HOME

A New Feeling of Soda

My Room 

My wastebasket (the top says "The little bears are living well today")

LIVING THE JUNGWON LIFE

And we made it to the weekend — amazing because this first week felt longer than a reality tv show. We arrived in a strange new country, were swept off to a largely empty mansion and had to complete a variety of tasks while constantly meeting new characters. But now I think we have left reality and moved on to life.

One of the most important ways that I recognize my life is rhythm — waking, sleeping, eating, the ways we parcel our time into bite size pieces. At Jungwon our rhythm is governed by one thing: classes. Each day breakfast is served from 8-9. Korean language classes run from 9-1 each day. Lunch is at 1, and then teaching workshops generally go from 2-4. Dinner is from 6-7 and the optional Korean Language Study Hall is from 7-9. We know where we're going almost every hour of the day and generally who we will see as we go. The parts of the day are long and but time is always short.

The weekend is different. There is time to sleep in, to write in our journals, to figure out how the laundry machines work. I think I spent 5000 won this morning just trying to get the right size change for laundry. We gather in the lounge and browse facebook. We skype and we catch up on our netflix intake. We reflect.

Korean classes are moving quickly. My class of beginners started the week with the alphabet and ended with basic commands and self-introductions. Theoretically, we can now say our names, our nationalities, our occupations and ask all the associated questions. The Korean teachers are marvelous. They come from Korea University and live in Jungwon just in order to teach us for four hours every day. Our first teacher is a fashionable Korean woman who seems to have a quiet sense of humor about our class. Our second teacher is also a woman, but where our first teacher is a bit reserved the second is extremely animated. Every time we learn a new vocabulary word she looks surprised, as when we learned the word for chalk board she seemed astounded to discover there was such a thing in the room. I feel as if in discovering the language we are sometimes discovering the world and the sorts of things it can contain all over again.

Teaching workshops are more varied and often quite fun. These afternoon courses are led by past and current ETAs covering topics from Textbooks to Classroom Games. Often the strategies we learn about in the afternoon can be seen in our Korean classrooms the next day, reinforcing everything we do here as a lesson. This immersive learning makes our breaks, our dance parties and excursions into Goesan all the more necessary and memorable.

THE WAY BACK

The Korean landscape is beautiful, like something out of a pre-raphaelite painting. Besides mountains and rich vegetation, I've seen woodpeckers so small when flying that I almost thought I was watching a large moth until it landed on a tree, and beetles which measured with their tusks were as long as my index finger. Maybe I will have to practice my nature photography.

ON THE TOWN

Goesan is considered a rural town in Korea, but to those of us used to a country with a bit more space, Goesan seems hopping.

INTO GOESAN (괴산!)

Yesterday a large group of us adventured into Goesan with our peerless R.A. Jihye. We didn't have too much time before dinner, but the walk itself was beautiful enough to convince me to go (at least on the way down). In Goesan we stopped at the post office, stationary store and various ice cream locations. I couldn't escape the stationary store and so, have yet to try the Korean dessert poppingsu, a combination, as far as I have heard, of shaved ice, ice cream, rice cake and fruit. Everyone swears it is delicious and I believe them.

JUNGWON DUSK

DINOSAUR PARK