Dear Reader, 

Eric’s family had a tradition of being around the dinner table and going over the day’s events. They had a game for this, and it was called: “Highlight, Lowlight, Lightlight” (Lightlight being odd, weird, or something funny.)

I’m going to do this for our STEAM trip to Uljin for the English Village. 

But first a brief rundown: we put our names in for the lottery of getting to go to the STEAM Uljin trip, 10 teachers were going to be picked. Uljin is on the east coast of SK and three hours away, so DGEV would put the teachers up in a hotel and stay there for the three-day duration. Sounded like a great way to get away and see a new part of Korea so we said - please pick us. If you were picked you would work Monday-Wednesday and then be given Thursday & Friday off along with either overtime or holiday days - you choose. They did! we went with 10 other teachers, 5 went to Uljin schools and 5 went to schools in Hupo a town a little south of Uljin. We would be visiting Nambu Elementary in Uljin, only me and Eric the other 3 teachers were sent to 3 other elementary schools.

Highlight: Killuaha and the kids. Killuaha was a South African student I had in my class, not his real name, he was (obviously) fluent in English, so he and I got to have lots of conversations while I was there. My class was a little unruly/energetic, but nothing unmanageable and having Killuaha’s presence made it so the students wanted to be better at English and they all looked up to him or asked for his help often. It is an incredible feeling having been starved of a fluent interaction with your students this whole time then to find one student fluent, all of a sudden your the world is oyster with words! The possibilities are blown open. To find you can say to a student “you see this gear inside the robot, I don’t think it’s connected to the metal bar, we’re going to have to fix that” – “oh okay!” – “hang on” – “teacher why isn’t this working, I thought I did everything right?” – “let me take a look at that, the legs are the worst part, let me help.” …. it’s just relieving and all of sudden makes you a little sad, as you realize all your limited experiences could be much more. 

But there is beauty in both, limited translations ultimately lead to fun face, hand gestures, and vocals that deliver anything you or a student are trying to say. Then there is always Papago. 

I found out his mom was one of the permanent English teachers at Nambu Elementary, she popped in to say hello on the second day. I also later found out she is friends with one of our South African teachers here, Selassie, who was in Uljin with me and worked with her a few years back at a different school in Korea. 

Killuaha confided in me that he is in a relationship with another student in a different class, I was sworn to secrecy not to tell his mother, who I feel confident won’t find this blog. We talked about him loving Korea and if he missed South Africa, he did not, he likes it better in Korea. He does not like anime, he likes sports, and he also found the cafeteria food spicy. 

My other students who were joys were: Bacon (pictured in the second photo) he sat behind Killuaha and was funny, engaged the whole time. Sophia, who was a boy, who was energetic and completely engaged in my games, always with his hand up first or asking Killuaha for help. Bear, she barely did any work and it was hard to get her to finish anything without me standing over her egging her on, but she was adorable and I think fairly artistic, I would have loved to spend some one-on-one time with her. Cockroach, a girl, moody, wearing a big black puffer coat down to her feet, she begrudgingly did all the work, but I could tell she did it all with ease, I wish I could have spent more one on one time with her cuz I wanted her to know she was smart and special.

Lowlight: The only lowlight I can come up with is that Eric and I decided to go on a vacation after our vacation, traveling to Sokcho and visit Seoraksan National Park, the only problem was I had to go back to Daegu for a doctors appointment to see about the determination by the Korean National Insurance whether they were going to cover my medicine. Well turns out the appointment was a dud only because we got there and our translater (who thank god was there) said I was already covered and my medicine was too, so the $1,200 (I had paid for my shot in October) was already 50% covered, the medicine was actually $2,200. It was a bit of a confusing moment but revealed that there had been a communication error in our last meeting with my doctor, I actually think we understood him, but he didn’t know the process correctly and were given a bit of false hope. Who knows, the communication is it’s own obstacle and that was expected and does make me feel assured I did the right thing by getting the bulk of my treatment/recovery in the USA before I came abroad. 

Lightlight: Dog channels on Korean TV, the giant shower head in our hotel - blazing bright red color, I also watched a completely bizarre Korean reality TV show with one female actress acting out several characters all interacting together. 

Extra highlights: 

We love mondu (만두) = Korean dumplings, we have found delicious mondu wherever we have gone and they are usually under $5 for 5-8 dumplings that completely fill you up!

Our “sexy” table in our hotel room.

Sleeping on a comfortable ‘western’ mattress. 

Wandering around with the teachers taking photos.

Actually taking photos with other teachers for once! They are here and I now have evidence. 

Kevin tasting the seawater. 

Seeing a stray kitten play alongside her momma.

Waking up at 6:30 am and not having to be at our school until 9:30 am. 

New coat for the Korean winter. 

Mr. Ha our gracious and funny English liaison. 

Extra lowlights:

Finding a dog chained to his dog house looking sad. 

The closed-down burger place we were recommended. 

Trying to pick a restaurant with 5 people. 

Eric having a bad day, sulking/grumpy - the family is happy together or sad together - we ride the waves. 

Hanging dead fish everywhere.