Give me a call!

Once again I have stumbled upon some amazing technology that will aid in keeping up with my friends and family at home. I have a U.S. phone number that enables people in the U.S. to call at anytime without international phone charges! My number is: (505) 349-0434 and it will cost the same as calling New Mexico (it's a New Mexico number.) When you dial my number you will be connected to my computer through the internet. If I'm not online at the time (which will probably be the case more often than not), you can leave me a on my voicemail and I will get it the next time I'm at my computer. For friends and family who use cell phones this will use minutes the same way a normal call would to anyone who is long distance; however, if you call during the non-peak hours or from a landline in New Mexico it's free! Try it out when you get a chance!

I know where I'll be living!

Fulbright is a very organized program. I have been very impressed with the way they run things; however, there is one thing that they have kept us in the dark about: placements. We came to Korea with no knowledge of where we might end up living. Yesterday they announced where exactly we will be teaching. It was a ceremony where Mrs. Shim came to read out our names one by one and we were called to the front of the room to put a little piece of tape with our name on it on a giant map of Korea, representing where we will be going. I am very happy to report that I will be teaching at Jeju Jungang Girls' Public High School in Jeju City on Jeju Island which is off the southern coast of South Korea. I am very excited to be on this island. My school has about 1200 students, and there is no telling how many of them I will be responsible for weekly, it could be as many as 800 students in 20 different classes that I will be teaching. This is where my own experience and those of the other ETAs diverge; I am now an employee of this school and my experience will vary based on the school's needs and wants. (We are of course protected by many things, like being overworked, due to specific stipulations in our contract between the school and Fulbright.) I am very excited about living on a sub-tropical island. On the island I will be able to scuba dive, ride my bike, go to beaches in the summer months, and eat incredible sea food. There are direct flights off the island to Japan and China which I plan to take full advantage of as well. I plan to pursue Tae Kwon Do and earn a black belt before the year's end. Jeju Island is known as Korea's honeymoon destination. It has been described as "Emerald Isle," "Island of the Gods," "Island of Fantasy," and "Korea's Hawaii." I hope that I have sparked interest in at least some of you to come and visit!

Jeju City, Jeju Island

This is the island where I will be living; it's off the southern coast of South Korea.


This is the city where I will be living and teaching at an all girl's high school. Jeju City is the largest city on Jeju Island with a population of just under 300,000 people.

Songnisan, South Korea

This weekend Fulbright took us on a beautiful retreat to Songnisan where there is a Buddhist temple and the world's largest bronze Buddha. We arrived on Friday just in time for a traditional Korean meal, where we all sat cross-legged on the floor and shared over 30 small dishes of Korean food in groups of four. That evening we visited the temple for evening prayer where the monks used four different types of gongs and drums to call to living beings in heaven, hell, earth and water. Friday morning at 2:30 am I woke up with three other friends and we attended the 3 am buddhist prayer ceremony which was amazing. Afterwards, we set off to hike the highest peak in the area, about an hour before dawn, with headlamps of course. We hiked for five hours and returned just in time to have an American breakfast at our hotel, complete with eggs, french toast, french fries, ketchup and anything else that you might consider "American." The Fulbright director, Mrs. Shim is very maternal towards all of us and she likes to treat us as if it is always our birthday. (During a lecture on Buddhism Friday afternoon, she interrupted the visiting scholar to say that we needed to take a break and have a snack, which turned out to be Twizzlers, Keebler Elf chocolate cookies, cheese and crackers, all of which are very hard to find in Korea.) We stayed in a very nice hotel and slept Korean style on yos, I have included a picture of our room above. It was a very relaxing weekend, which was much needed.

Korean Language Class

Every morning I sit in a gigantic classroom with 11 other Fulbright ETAs as a very thin, kind, enthusiastic, and incredibly patient Korean woman attempts to teach us how to pronounce, write, and converse in Korean. Every one of us is bleary eyed from staying up late in a dormitory that never seems to call it a night. Perhaps it's that I have been out of college for a few years, and most of the other ETAs just graduated, but I have been running on less sleep than I'm used to at the age of 25. For some reason it is not quite possible for me to find coherent meaning in the words that are being slung at me in this classroom at 9 am, but unfortunately, the woman who is slinging them, is more persistent than anyone I've ever seen. Although this woman's name is not known to me or the rest of my class; she is our Sang Sehng Neem (teacher) and we call her by that name. I think that we are being put through this intensive language course for more than one reason. Reason one is to learn Korean, but reason two is to see what it's like to be so far from fluent in a foreign language and watch as our teacher never gives up on us, no matter how many blank stares we offer her day in and day out as she attempts to engage us in some sort of dialogue. For the first few days all we did was repeat after her, so now when she says "repeat" (dada haseyo) in Korean or asks us to please open our books to page 22, she often can't hold in a giggle as we repeat every word that leaves her mouth right back to her, including when she is instructing us to do something. In many ways the class reminds me of what I can remember from Kindergarten. For example, San Sehng Neem used bright colored plastic letters on a magnetic board to teach us the alphabet, she brings cookies to class, and rewards us for the ever so tiny improvements that happen every few days. Monday was our first quiz which consisted of a ten question (six multiple choice, two spelling, and two conjugating vowels questions) that only one of the girls in my class scored a 100% on. When she passed out the test, San Sehng Neem watched as most of us rejoiced when we saw we had gotten somewhere between an 60%-80% range. Then she said something in Korean, and as usual we began to shout out guesses of what she might have said in English. She shook her head as we shouted: "Good job?!" "Well done?!" and finally she said... "Need to study more better." As we were leaving class I made the mistake of turning to another ETA and saying, "All I have to say is, I'm sure glad I don't have her job," to which she responded: "You do."

South Korea in the Rain

We went to Seoul yesterday. I guess I should clarify that at the moment I am living in Chuncheon, South Korea, a town of 400,000 in Northeast Korea, near the demilitarized zone. We have been taking intensive Korean language classes, getting to know one another and learning basic ESL skills. We had this weekend off and were encouraged to leave the dorm, as we found out that the power would be off for the weekend. Considering the hot, muggy days, we opted to board a train to Seoul on Saturday. On our way to the train station the rain began to pour. By the time we had settled in for our two hour trip to Seoul we were all drenched (I was travelling with my roommate and two other friends in the group.) The rest of our trip was almost comical as we walked around in heavy rain, unaware that it was unprecedented typhoon weather that would later make national headlines and kill ten people. Not knowing the language makes us deaf and mute. We could not hear the news on television or even catch conversations on the street. We refused to let the 20 inches of rain that came in that 24 hour period to trample our ambition of a fun weekend in the city. We ate incredible food, kalbi, which is a Korean BBQ, where you cook strips of beef right at your table, and Bee Bim Bop, which is another traditional vegetable and rice dish. When we returned to Chuncheon we were all instructed that South Korea's weather had made national news and we all needed to contact our parents to let them know we were o.k., because they had begun to call the Fulbright office, as worried parents often do, and rather than field one hundred plus phone calls we should just let them know that we are O.K.