First Hike

Hey Everyone! I hope you all are having an exciting weekend. The Packers and Brewers play back to back today so it will be a Sunday full of Wisco sports for most of you. With fall coming, I am sure the trees are beginning to change and Wisconsin is beautiful right now.

This weekend flew by for me, I am beginning to think weekends should be five days, and week days should be just two days so I can accomplish all that I want to. My weekend was awesome. My friends Sam and Erik came to Gwangju to tear up the town. Sam is a UW grad from Mankato, Minnesota, but Grandma don't worry he's not a Vikings fan, I know better. Erik is from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and he is one of the first Canadians I've ever really met.

Saturday was low key for us. We spent the morning in a coffee shop near Chunum National University updating our pictures and organizing our blogs, something essental for any waygook in Korea.(waygook means foreigner in Korean) Chunum is just a 15 minute walk from my apartment and it has the typical University feel.

Something that Erik, Sam and I have learned in these past two months of living in Korea together is that we are all exceptional with directions. We can usually find our way anywhere with little or no problem. It must be a midwest/northwest thing because when we travel together we always know where we are going and rarely get lost.

We headed downtown for some shopping in the afternoon. Downtown is probably a five thousand won ($5, taxi rides are ridiculously cheap in Gwangju) taxi ride from Chunum but we decided to test
our luck and skill, so we decided to walk. We got a sweet tour of the Gwangju we haven't seen before which was nice, but we eventually made it downtown.

Once downtown the disappointment set in hardcore. Erik and Sam both wanted some new shoes. There is a really good street downtown with probably at least 10 shoe stores within a 5 minute walk. We went into the first shoe store and I found a sick pair of shoes. I went to the shoe salesperson and asked in my non-existant broken Korean and asked for an American size 12. She looked at me like was crazy for having feet that big but she went into the back looking for my shoes. She came back telling me in broken English that there were no size 12 shoes. Koreans have some style when it comes to Nikes and I wanted pretty much every shoe in that store. We ended up going to every shoe store on Shoe Street and in each store I was rejected. It sucks seeing all of these awesome shoes but not being able to get ANY of them. Come to find out the shoe stores in Gwagnju only carry up to size 11 and that is rare too. Erik fared much better than Sam and I, (Sam's a size 12 too) and he was able to find some shoes that fit. Guess I will save that money for my traveling in February.

Sunday was the best day of the weekend and maybe even the best time since I arrived in Korea. Sam, Erik and I woke up early and decided to hike the highest mountain in Jeollonamdo Provence (our state). Mudeung Mountain is 1187 meters high. For all of you Americans that only understand feet that would be 3894 feet. To put that into perspective, Denali is 20000 feet and Timms hill is 1200 feet. Coming from Wisco, I really never had the opportunity to hike before so this would be my frist time hiking. Coming from the Yukon, Erik practically lives on a mountain up there and is quite experienced in hiking. Sam has been hiking out west a quite a bit too so I was going with some experienced people.

Going into this I really had no idea what to expect so I imagined we would walk up a blacktop path to the top of the mountain, see some cool views and walk down. Boy was I in for a rude awakening. When we got there there was a blacktop path but we took a path less traveled and went for the deserted path.

We started our treck up the mountain on some steep stairs and I was beginning to wonder what I was getting myself into. About fifteen minutes later we came to another blacktop road. We went over to look at the map and come to find out that blacktop path actually weaved around the mountain, zigzaging back and forth up to where we ended up. That didn't deter us because we went looking for another deserted path up the mountain and it didn't take us long to find one. We hiked up the steep rock stairs and rough terrain for a good 35 more minutes before we came a ridge.

The view of the Gwangju from here was amazing. You could see for miles around. The city was to the West and more mountains were in every other direction. It was one of those moments that really made me realize how insignificant we really are in the world and how much there is to see.

The views from the top of the mountain were so awesome and pictures really don't do justice to the place. I've decided that hiking is something I want to explore a little more and maybe go again soon.

Anyway, I am glad to give you all an update on my weekend and my first hiking experience. I miss all off you and hope to talk to you all soon.

Aaron

Welcome to Korea

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while since I blogged but here goes nothing!

Well most of you should know by now that I am living in The Republic of Korea for the next year or so, teaching Middle School English. Life here is a little different than Wisco, and for the next year I hope to blog what I've seen and done on the other side of the world.

I guess there is no better place to start than explaining a little about my schools that I teach in. I teach five days a week at two different schools. On Monday's, Thursday's and Friday's I teach at a small country school in Subuk (name of town), Damyang (county), Jeollnam-do (state). There are MAYBE a thousand people in the town, but I think that may be pushing it. My kids here are awesome but most of them have a very low English level. There are about 94 kids at Subuk. I am teaching first, second and third grade, in America that would be 7th, 8th and 9th grade. Each grade has a high and low level English Class, so I am teaching 6 normal classes a week at Subuk and five special classes. I don't teach by myself EVER! There is always a Korean English teacher in all of my classes which makes it easier when the kids don't understand what I am saying (which happens frequently). My co-teacher at Subuk, Mrs. Kang (pronounced kong) is my main co-teacher. She is the one who makes sure everything is going good with my apartment and stuff. Overall Subuk is a good school but I love my two days a week I spend at my other school so much.

Every week I look forward to my two days a week at Geumseong Middle School. On Tuesday's and Wednesday's I spend my 8 hours at the smallest school in the county. Geumseong has 27 students. Grade 7 has ten kids, Grade eight has 11 kids and my 9th Grade has six kids!!! My co-teacher there is Mrs. Oh. She is probably the best co-teacher in the country, no joke. She is extremely helpful with everything, from paying bills to helping me figure out how to teach. I teach 3 classes a day at Geumseong, but I still need to be there 9 to 5. In my spare time I usually either plan lessons or plan my vacation in February.
My kids at Geumseong are awesome I was able to go on a field trip with them last week, exploring Damyang and I was able to get to know them a little better. This is a picture of some of my favorite students. Most of these kids are in 9th Grade.


Teaching is a whole new experience I don't think I was prepared for. Before I came my Grandma who was a Elementary school teacher for 30+ years asked me, "do you even know how to write a lesson plan?" I laughed and told her that I wasn't worried because they would teach us how to do all of that when we got to Korea. Well Grandma, you were right to be skeptical, I still really have no idea how to write a lesson plan after two two months of teaching. Getting the kids to speak is probably the hardest aspect of teaching English in Korea. Korean's are very shy when it comes to talking in English all around. They probably know the words, but they are usually reluctant to speak because they are afraid of being wrong.

Well I hope that gives you all some insight into what I am doing over here. Hopefully early next week I will be able to write some more about life over here.

Miss all of you.

Love

Aaron

Cambridge

Well Friday our group from UWSP took the hour and a half drive through the crazy streets of London to Cambridge University. We had tour guides waiting for us when we got there and they took us through the medieval city. The city was like nothing I had ever seen before. The city has so much history it is unbelievable. The University was founded in 1209, meaning that the University was more than 800 years old! It was crazy gazing at all of the buildings thinking about how many people had passed here before me. Some of the famous people that studied at Cambridge were, Issac Newton (first to understand gravity)Niels Bohr (helped with the splitting of the atom)Crick and Wattson (the guys that discovered DNA)and how could I forget Charles Darwin (the guy who has a small theory on evolution) It was pretty cool to think of what discoveries had been made here and so forth. We had about a two hour tour through the city and our tour guide explained the history of the town and the University. We had about four hour to wander around the town to explore and sight see. Two of the other guys from our group thought it would be cool to go see the Colleges up close and personal. Almost all of the colleges had no visitors posted on their entrances because it is a very touristy city. Well being college age and one of us had a backpack we looked like we belong. We walked right by the porters (British security guard) and went right into the college. We walked around the buildings, which looked pretty much like small castles, and some how we ended up in their residence halls. It was a pretty cool experience, "once in a lifetime". We did this for a few of the colleges and we got kind of bored. We ended up going to a modern shopping mall and sitting around for a bit. When we left we saw a bus that said FREE, a college students favorite word, we had no idea where it was going but we decided that we needed to explore. The bus winding through the city streets out to the outskirts of town in the exact oposite direction we wanted to go. Luckily there was a smart little English boy on the bus that explained to us where to go. We ended up walking for about 15 minutes back to town in the rain but it was a learning experience. When we got back to city center we decided to check out the church service in the amazing Kings College Chapel. The atmosphere in this place saw unreal.
Kings College has a world famous men's choir that sings at every service. They were so good they ended up putting me to sleep, it had been a long day so a dark chapel with relaxing music put me right to sleep whoops. Well that was the end of the day in Cambridge. We are going to Westminster Abby tomorrow to a church service there. Tomorrow I will have attended more church in the last week than I have in the past two years. Peace.

Blimey I'm Here!

Well here we go! I finally arrived in London 3 days ago after the longest day of my life. The flight over was pretty boring, while the entire plane was sleeping, I sat there wide awake in a chair too small for a 10 year old. After we gathered all of our luggage and found the bus, we made our way back to our home for the next three months, International Student House right in the heart of London. Once we made ourselves home in our four person dormroom that looks like it came right out of the movie Hostel we set out to explore the city. That night we ended up going out to explore the subway system in London, The Tube. We took the tube down to Parliament and as soon as we got to the top of the stairs Big Ben was right there in from of us within ten feet, there it hit me, I'm in LONDON!!!! After we walked around and gazed at Parliament, Westminster Abby, and Big Ben all light up we went off to a pub to have a pint. We finally made it back to our dorm and hit the sack after being awake for 34 hours :/ Sunday we had a group meeting with the rest of the UW-SP group at 1PM but for some reason we thought we would wake up without an alarm, guess what?!? That doesn't work with horrible jet lag. I woke up at 1259 and rushed down to our meeting, what a good way to start off the semester..... We started our classes Monday, I was signed up for an international studies class but I decided that I wanted to take the theater class instead, I had to keep up with my ritual of dropping a class every semester. The theater class is going to be pretty sweet. Every week we need to go to a performance in one of London's hundred theaters. This might be the easiest three credits I have ever earned. Monday night our class went to our first play, The Six Degrees of Separation, some people didn't like it but I thought it was pretty good. My day today consisted of going to the largest museum ever! We went to the British Museum. This place was huge! There are over ninety rooms filled with artifacts and history, I was only able to make it through ten of them within the two and a half hours that I was there. I am probably going to be going back at least 4 or 5 more times to make sure I get everything. Well That was my first few days in London. GOODNIGHT!

2 Months!

60 days until I leave for London. This is really exciting, I am starting to get pretty nervous about leaving all of my friends and family, but in the end I am pretty sure it will be worth it. Last weekend we had our pre-departure meeting in Stevens Point and I was able to schedule all of my classes. I will be taking Western European Politics, Regional History: British Culture and Society, The Geography of a Changing Europe, and Culture and Civilization, Contemporary Britain. Oh and I will be taking a Rugby class too, not to sure how that will work because I hate football. This is my first experience with a blog so don't judge if it sucks.