So, I guess we've survived a typhoon!
With that being said we are extremely fortunate to have made friends with two other English speakers that live in our town. David and his wife live about a 7 minute walk from our apartment and are extremely friendly and helpful in getting us acquainted with the town. On Saturday David arranged for the other Epik teacher living in Yeongdeok, the next biggest town, about a 20 minute bus ride from here, to come and play games and share dinner together. Then on Sunday David and his wife took Brandon and I to both Daejin and Goraebul beach and on a hike up to a look out point above Daejin beach. David honestly reminds me a lot of Mathew Larson. He moved to South Korea because he sees it as his ‘promised land’. He goes to the beach and swims everyday because he loves to do it and also does a lot of hiking, running, and outside exercise. He sees Yeonghae as the perfect small town that has every type of activity he likes to do all within a small and quiet town. We feel very lucky they have been so welcoming to us and that they are also into board games which is a little more my pace.
(Overview of Yeonghae from David's apartment roof.)
At my main middle school here in Yeonghae, we have 3 grades and 2 classes for each grade a week. For the time being they are limiting the amount of kids in school to only one grade per week while the other two grades are at home doing online classes. With that being said I will prepare two in person classes for my 3rd graders (9th graders in America) this week, and two online lessons for both my 1st (7th graders in America) and 2nd (8th graders in America). My two other middle schools are much smaller so I only have one class for each grade at both schools.
Byeonggok Middle School
On Wednesday I finally had a chance to see Byeonggok Middle School. My co-teacher for that school came and picked me up, showed me where the bus stop will drop me off, and how to get around the school. I had a chance to briefly introduce myself to the students and get settled in the teachers lounge. Byeonggok is a much smaller ‘country school’ as people here would call it which means I have one 2nd grader, two 1st graders, and nine 3rd graders. My co-teacher for this school is extremely friendly though and I am very excited to get a chance to work with her.
Because Byeonggok is such a small school they do not run a cafeteria, so on Wednesdays at that school I will need to walk over to the Byeonggok Elementary school, where Brandon teaches on Monday’s, down the road to eat lunch. This day at Byeonggok was also exciting as it was the 2nd day after a new principal was promoted at that school. The day before, the teachers had called a rice-cake store and ordered all sorts of goodies to welcome the new principal. I was lucky to try a bunch of different traditional rice cakes that were very interesting and it was honestly just a fun experience. Most of them are very very chewy rice, almost gummy tasting (not sure why or how), with a variety of beans, nuts, and fruits mixed in. I brought some home for Brandon to try and he said it reminded him of a chewy rice granola bar, haha! My teacher at Byeonggok was supposed to drop me at the bus stop so I could practice riding the bus home but I was not able to because of the weather. Everybody was preparing for the big typhoon so she drove me home instead which was very easy and convenient, especially amidst the muggy and rainy weather.
Yeonghae’s biggest typhoon in 70 years!
Thursday I was supposed to have the same opportunity to meet my other ‘country school’, Chukhsan Middle School but was not able to because of the Typhoon that came through Wednesday night. The typhoon was expected to come through around 10 pm - 12 am. We had gone over to play games with a few friend’s at David’s and when we walked home around 11:30 pm there was no rain and the weather still seemed normal. I was a bit grumpy because I was told I still needed to be at work at 8:30 am but Brandon was told not to come in until 9 am. Everything was normal and calm when we fell asleep, but in the middle of the night the typhoon came out and made its debut! Brandon and I both woke up at around 4 am because of the wind banging against our bedroom window, the very heavy downpour, and the sound of loose metal getting banged around outside. We both got out of bed to see what was going on and were amazed at how much rain was coming down. I saw a car with it’s headlights shining a light on the road and it looked like somebody had a hose spraying water across the street in sheets. The windows here are a little weird and I don’t think we had them closed completely right. This caused a little bit of water to get in, and made the wind seem much louder. However without too much trouble, we were able to get the window closed and we tried to go back to sleep. Everything was so loud, I wasn’t able to fall asleep for at least another hour or so through the storm, after we had settled back down.
We woke up to a power outage. Though I am not surprised after seeing the trees bounce off of the telephone poles like bouncy balls all night! No power means no air conditioning so our apartment was very warm as it had likely been out for hours and also no wifi. Because we still do not have our Alien Registration cards to get a bank account or cell service here that means wifi is our only means of communicating with anybody here in South Korea or our families back home. I headed off to school grumpy as I did not get a good night's sleep from the storm and I could hear the wind still beating against our building outside. When I got to school everybody told me that school was cancelled because the telephones were out, the power was out, and the wifi was out. Because I was supposed to go to Chukhsan though, I had to wait around for a few hours to make sure that my teacher still wasn’t planning to come pick me up and unfortunately they could not get ahold of her as the storm must have knocked out her cell service or something like that. One thing you get used to very quickly here is people talking in Korean about you or trying to figure something out for you and then give you the “English run-down” in about 5-10 words or less. At 10 am they were finally able to get in contact with my teacher and she agreed to come and pick me up next Thursday instead. No power, no wifi, no air con, no school so I was sent home early. I feel very lucky that I had our fully charged Chromebook at school which meant I was able to make a rough draft outline of a few more of my lesson plans while I waited, even though we didn’t have wifi or power for the school computers to run.
Because my school had been cancelled for the day I was expecting to see Brandon at home as he didn’t need to wait around to sort out anything about going to another school that day. His principal decided they needed to stay all day despite having no students which left me a lot of free time while home alone. I finally found an opportunity to completely finish unpacking our remaining suitcases and cleared our dirty floor up a bit. We had been very unmotivated to finish unpacking as we were still sleeping on the floor and didn’t have enough places to put our clothes and extra things. I spent my whole morning tearing down the shipping boxes that recently delivered our shiny new chairs so we can now both finally sit at the kitchen table together, one of the storage shelves we ordered to serve as a little pantry as we are currently occupying the world’s tiniest kitchen, and sorting out all of the other miscellaneous things we have accumulated in our short but busy time here.
We did get an update about our bed on Wednesday. The order has been placed now, but it is still two weeks out. Why? We are not sure but we are just rolling with the punches. David and his wife have a thick foam pad they keep at their house for when guests come to stay and they graciously offered for us to borrow it while we await our new bed. The difference is phenomenal and we are finally able to get a good night’s sleep.
Our first missed birthday
It was grandma’s 89th birthday this week and I am tearing up at the thought of it. Brandon and I have both grown very close to grandma over the last year as we have done weekly visits and also worked to transcribe her full life’s story. I had hopes of calling home to speak with her on her birthday before the family came over for cake and ice cream but because of the wfi outage I was unable. Things are getting a little bit easier here. Some days are definitely better and easier than others. This week we finally had the courage to order take out chicken from a little shop that is right before our closest grocery store. It always smells delicious but we have been too nervous to try it out. We did walk away with a delicious dinner even though it was very scary and nerve-wracking the whole time. I am trying to stay brave and believe that things will continue to improve as we begin teaching lessons and settle even more, and as we make this apartment our new home. Growing up in Utah all of my life I never expected I would have to endure a Typhoon… but it’s just one more adventure we are adding to the list!
This week from Claire’s work outlook has been a bit dismal. I have been overwhelmed with the pressure to be ready to go as soon as it’s time to start teaching on Monday, September 7th but also not having any idea what I needed to be teaching or how to go about lesson planning. Luckily over the last two days I was able to get a lot of clarifications on what the actual expectations are and I am hoping that things will go as smoothly as possible come teaching time next week. I am teaching at three different schools and have had a chance to start my lesson planning for quite a few different classes and just need to finish the lessons up with practice activities. I am told and honestly believe that after a week or two of teaching I will get a better hang of what activities work well and be able to instantly spark an idea for what kind of activity will go with each lesson I plan.
At my main middle school here in Yeonghae, we have 3 grades and 2 classes for each grade a week. For the time being they are limiting the amount of kids in school to only one grade per week while the other two grades are at home doing online classes. With that being said I will prepare two in person classes for my 3rd graders (9th graders in America) this week, and two online lessons for both my 1st (7th graders in America) and 2nd (8th graders in America). My two other middle schools are much smaller so I only have one class for each grade at both schools.
Byeonggok Middle School
On Wednesday I finally had a chance to see Byeonggok Middle School. My co-teacher for that school came and picked me up, showed me where the bus stop will drop me off, and how to get around the school. I had a chance to briefly introduce myself to the students and get settled in the teachers lounge. Byeonggok is a much smaller ‘country school’ as people here would call it which means I have one 2nd grader, two 1st graders, and nine 3rd graders. My co-teacher for this school is extremely friendly though and I am very excited to get a chance to work with her.
Because Byeonggok is such a small school they do not run a cafeteria, so on Wednesdays at that school I will need to walk over to the Byeonggok Elementary school, where Brandon teaches on Monday’s, down the road to eat lunch. This day at Byeonggok was also exciting as it was the 2nd day after a new principal was promoted at that school. The day before, the teachers had called a rice-cake store and ordered all sorts of goodies to welcome the new principal. I was lucky to try a bunch of different traditional rice cakes that were very interesting and it was honestly just a fun experience. Most of them are very very chewy rice, almost gummy tasting (not sure why or how), with a variety of beans, nuts, and fruits mixed in. I brought some home for Brandon to try and he said it reminded him of a chewy rice granola bar, haha! My teacher at Byeonggok was supposed to drop me at the bus stop so I could practice riding the bus home but I was not able to because of the weather. Everybody was preparing for the big typhoon so she drove me home instead which was very easy and convenient, especially amidst the muggy and rainy weather.
Yeonghae’s biggest typhoon in 70 years!
Thursday I was supposed to have the same opportunity to meet my other ‘country school’, Chukhsan Middle School but was not able to because of the Typhoon that came through Wednesday night. The typhoon was expected to come through around 10 pm - 12 am. We had gone over to play games with a few friend’s at David’s and when we walked home around 11:30 pm there was no rain and the weather still seemed normal. I was a bit grumpy because I was told I still needed to be at work at 8:30 am but Brandon was told not to come in until 9 am. Everything was normal and calm when we fell asleep, but in the middle of the night the typhoon came out and made its debut! Brandon and I both woke up at around 4 am because of the wind banging against our bedroom window, the very heavy downpour, and the sound of loose metal getting banged around outside. We both got out of bed to see what was going on and were amazed at how much rain was coming down. I saw a car with it’s headlights shining a light on the road and it looked like somebody had a hose spraying water across the street in sheets. The windows here are a little weird and I don’t think we had them closed completely right. This caused a little bit of water to get in, and made the wind seem much louder. However without too much trouble, we were able to get the window closed and we tried to go back to sleep. Everything was so loud, I wasn’t able to fall asleep for at least another hour or so through the storm, after we had settled back down.
We woke up to a power outage. Though I am not surprised after seeing the trees bounce off of the telephone poles like bouncy balls all night! No power means no air conditioning so our apartment was very warm as it had likely been out for hours and also no wifi. Because we still do not have our Alien Registration cards to get a bank account or cell service here that means wifi is our only means of communicating with anybody here in South Korea or our families back home. I headed off to school grumpy as I did not get a good night's sleep from the storm and I could hear the wind still beating against our building outside. When I got to school everybody told me that school was cancelled because the telephones were out, the power was out, and the wifi was out. Because I was supposed to go to Chukhsan though, I had to wait around for a few hours to make sure that my teacher still wasn’t planning to come pick me up and unfortunately they could not get ahold of her as the storm must have knocked out her cell service or something like that. One thing you get used to very quickly here is people talking in Korean about you or trying to figure something out for you and then give you the “English run-down” in about 5-10 words or less. At 10 am they were finally able to get in contact with my teacher and she agreed to come and pick me up next Thursday instead. No power, no wifi, no air con, no school so I was sent home early. I feel very lucky that I had our fully charged Chromebook at school which meant I was able to make a rough draft outline of a few more of my lesson plans while I waited, even though we didn’t have wifi or power for the school computers to run.
Because my school had been cancelled for the day I was expecting to see Brandon at home as he didn’t need to wait around to sort out anything about going to another school that day. His principal decided they needed to stay all day despite having no students which left me a lot of free time while home alone. I finally found an opportunity to completely finish unpacking our remaining suitcases and cleared our dirty floor up a bit. We had been very unmotivated to finish unpacking as we were still sleeping on the floor and didn’t have enough places to put our clothes and extra things. I spent my whole morning tearing down the shipping boxes that recently delivered our shiny new chairs so we can now both finally sit at the kitchen table together, one of the storage shelves we ordered to serve as a little pantry as we are currently occupying the world’s tiniest kitchen, and sorting out all of the other miscellaneous things we have accumulated in our short but busy time here.
We did get an update about our bed on Wednesday. The order has been placed now, but it is still two weeks out. Why? We are not sure but we are just rolling with the punches. David and his wife have a thick foam pad they keep at their house for when guests come to stay and they graciously offered for us to borrow it while we await our new bed. The difference is phenomenal and we are finally able to get a good night’s sleep.
(A huge, Chine red-headed centipede misplaced by the Typhoon)
Our first missed birthday
It was grandma’s 89th birthday this week and I am tearing up at the thought of it. Brandon and I have both grown very close to grandma over the last year as we have done weekly visits and also worked to transcribe her full life’s story. I had hopes of calling home to speak with her on her birthday before the family came over for cake and ice cream but because of the wfi outage I was unable. Things are getting a little bit easier here. Some days are definitely better and easier than others. This week we finally had the courage to order take out chicken from a little shop that is right before our closest grocery store. It always smells delicious but we have been too nervous to try it out. We did walk away with a delicious dinner even though it was very scary and nerve-wracking the whole time. I am trying to stay brave and believe that things will continue to improve as we begin teaching lessons and settle even more, and as we make this apartment our new home. Growing up in Utah all of my life I never expected I would have to endure a Typhoon… but it’s just one more adventure we are adding to the list!
This David friend of yours sounds like a pretty cool dude😂
ReplyDeleteLove your story! Almost like experiencing it with you
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the stories and descriptions!! It's fun to read and stay caught up!
ReplyDeleteGood luck this week ❤️❤️❤️