I'm A Winner! (or, Men Are Stupid!)

So, I did something pretty dumb this weekend.

In Korea, there's a chain of restaurants/bars called "Garten Bier". The drinks are pretty cheap, and you aren't required to buy food like at some other places (a common practice in Korea), so it 's a good place to meet up with friends.

Anyway, one of the other gimmicks they have is a sort of "mini-fridge" for your beer. The table has a built in cooling apparatus, which cools your beer. And the beer glasses fit in perfectly. Pictures below.

Anyway, I challenged my friend to see who could keep put their hand inside the beer holder, and keep it in the longest. My friend is from Toronto, which is further north than Wisconsin or Minnesota, the two states I've lived in. But, he's always complaining about how cold it is here, so I give him crap from time to time. So, that's why I put forth the challenge.

I didn't keep track of how long I kept my hand in, but it was definitely over 10 minutes (although we started with the cooler off, so it took awhile to cool down.) It was a struggle.

And after I took my hand out, I realized I had some minor frostbite.

Needless to say, after a couple days, my hand now looks like this:

It's a little sore to the touch now, but I don't have any loss of motion in my hands, which is the only thing I was really worried about.

And hey, you know what? My friend quit before I did, and it's a good thing he did, because his hand doesn't look nearly as bad as mine. I guess he didn't have his pressed against the metal as tightly.

So, in the end, I'm a winner!

And that' s what counts!

View of Daejeon

Jungang Elementary School is kind of up on a hill, so there is a pretty good view of the city. I took a few pictures and I'm posting them here for you to see. Click to enlarge.








That's all for now. Enjoy!

Daejeon Expo Bridge

I promised pictures in my last post...well here they are!

The Daejeon Expo Bridge was built for the 1993 Expo in Daejeon. It's one of many structures built specifically for that expo.

I think it looks pretty cool at night, but hey, judge for yourself! Pics below!

As usual, you can click for a larger view.










A couple of the are a little blurry! Sorry, I didn't have a tripod!

Also, for reference, here is a link to a picture of the Expo Bridge in broad daylight.

I think it looks pretty cool myself! What do you think?

Finally, Pictures! (At School)

Alright, here's some pictures, as promised. These are all from my schools.

You can click the pictures for a larger view!

Seonhwa Elementary




This is a view of the school from the front. Only half of this building is actually the school, the other half is some sort of Educational Office or something.





This is the English room at Seonhwa. It's also my office. It has 3 big LCDs, and one of them is actually a touch screen that you can use to control the cursor on the computer. The touch screen is nice...but for whatever reason, even if you turn the TV off, the touch screen is still active. Needless to say, students can't seem to keep their hands off it while I'm using my computer...*sigh*

Jungang Elementary



This is the view from the front. This is actually the only picture of it I have, I think I'll try to get some more.






This is Jungang's English room. I'm in an office with some other teachers at Jungang, so it's only used when class is being taught. It has only one LCD screen...and it isn't even a touch screen! Actually, I think I like this setup more because it's nice and simple, and I don't have students molesting the TV after classes. I there are 5 computers in the middle of the room, I haven't seen those used at all. And the desk in the back (by the 2 tables) was originally going to be my desk I think, but I'm glad I'm in a shared office at this school.



This is a semi-staged shot of me teaching. My co-teacher wanted to get some photos for a local newspaper, so we brought in the class that had missed my lesson and ran the bit about American lunch.




These photos were basically staged, I never get to work with a group this small. It was pretty easy to get everybody to laugh doing my "Hello, how are you today? How is the weather today?" shtick though. But wait, it gets better...




Soooo...my co-teacher told me that she gathered the unmarried teachers in our school to be in some photos with me...um...thanks Mrs. Choi! *blush*

Alright, that's all for now! See you next time!

KOREA POWER

Right now it's Thursday, and my flight leaves at 1am Tuesday morning from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. I'm taking a bus from Madison to O'Hare though, so I'll essentially be leaving Monday night. This means I leave in about 100 hours! EGADDDDDSSSS!

I haven't really started packing yet, but I have been doing a lot of "prepacking". That is, making sure I have everything I'll need. Once I actually decide to pack, it shouldn't take too long. For the most part, I'm only going to bring clothes, a supply of toiletries, a few electronics and some souvenirs. Am I forgetting anything?

Speaking of electronics, I got 2 adapters today that will let me plug things into Korean power outlets. They were $3 a piece. Here are some pictures!


Notice that the prongs are round instead of flat, and that there is no third "ground" prong like in a US outlet.


Korea does use a different power standard than the US, so some things you bring from the US may fry if you try to use them in Korea without a power converter, but all of the things I'm bringing are already designed to handle the differences. So all I need are these little nubs! I'll probably want to find a few more once I get there, but the two I have will suffice for my PC and external hard drive, and I can always unplug one of those two things to charge my camera or whatever else when necessary.

That's all, just a little heads update on how my preparations are coming. Like I said, I leave in 4 days, so things should get more interesting soon! Hopefully I'll have enough time and energy to continue blogging regularly once I actually arrive in Korea. Cheers!

YFU Japanese Camp 2009

After not being able to participate last year because I was studying abroad in Japan, this year I was once again a staff member at the YFU Japanese camp at UW-Richland (in Richland Center, Wisconsin). The camp is a 10 day English camp for a group of Japanese students who are preparing to spend a year in US high schools. So, the camp basically acts as a buffer between Japan and the United States for the Japanese students.

The participants can basically be divided into three different categories:
Japanese students - High school students from Japan who will be spending a school year in the US. After camp the get sent to high schools all over the United States.
American mentors - American high school students who participate in most of the same activities as the Japanese students. The idea is that they model how students in US high schools will act, and give the Japanese students an idea of what to expect before they're thrown into a true high school environment. I did this once a long time ago, in 2001.
Staff - Work "behind the scenes" to make sure that everything runs according to plan. Staff also have plenty of opportunities to work with both the Japanese and American students if they choose. This is what I did, and I had the same position in both 2006 and 2007 as well.

Camp was both a lot of fun and really interesting for me this year. In 2006, my first year, I was a little bit quiet and unsure of what my position was, so I probably didn't do the best job I could have. In 2007, I was better, but after camp was over I felt that perhaps I hadn't divided my time amongst all of the students as well as I could have. I made some good friends that year, but felt that I could've done better. And I really feel that I did an excellent job improving in that respect this year.

Before it started, I was actually a little worried about how things would be this year. At the staff meeting the week before, I discovered that besides the director, I was the only returning full time staff member. Sally (a YFU camp legend) had done a lot of the planning, but she had other obligations and couldn't help out this year. This put me in a position of more responsibility, which I was a little apprehensive about, but everything managed to work out all right. Also, seeing as it had been two years since I was last at camp, and I was two years older, I was a little worried about how I would relate to the students this year. I also didn't have any trouble doing that (I guess I'm still really immature!), so that made me happy.

Like I said above, this was an interesting camp for me. There were two big things that I think helped me connect better with the campers this year. First of all, during the past year I've spent a lot of time with international students and other people who aren't originally from the United States. I think this extra exposure made it easier for me to see to individual differences within the students quicker, rather than seeing them as a massive group of foreigners initially. (This might sound stupid, but trust me, it happens when you happen upon a group of people from a different culture.) Additionally, I also now had study abroad experience of my own, which meant it was easier for me to understand what the students were going through.

I'm intrigued to see how my experience at this camp will compare to my experience with kids in Korea. I'm pretty sure I'll have less individual interaction with the students. Also, camp is so short, there is no time for the initial excitement of it to wear off. When everybody leaves, people are still just getting to know each other. In Korea, I'll easily have time to reach the stage where the sheen starts to wear off of everything. And that's fair enough, it's part of life and experiencing new things. I know I can adjust and go with the flow.

Anyway, I guess I don't have a whole lot more to say. I just hope that I'll be able to see some of the people I met again sometime in the future. Many of them I may never see again, but if I ever go back to Japan for an extended period, I bet I can meet up with at least a handful of them. Also, I wish them all luck during their year in the United States!

A couple of pictures from camp to end with:

Until next time!