So I’m pretty sure I left off my last post while still at the airport getting checked in by EPIK. For those of you who don’t know what EPIK is or haven’t read any of my post about it, EPIK is the English Program In Korea. It’s a (Korean) government program where they invite (or hired) English-speaking teachers to assist teaching Korean student speak English. There is a lot of things you have to do to be able to apply (see TEFL post) and more to do once you’ve applied and past the interview stage (see other posts).

Back to my orientation days. I spent about a week at Chungju University along with another couple hundred teachers training before being sent off to our posts. They separated all us into two groups, one starting on Tuesday and the other on Wednesday. I was part of the first group and got to stay in the dorms near the track on the edge of campus. We were checked in again at our dorms and given our room key. I got a nice roommate who I really only saw in the morning and at night since we were in different teaching locations.

We were given some goodies including a sandwich (Potato Cheese Sandwich… if I still had the picture I would so post it), water bottle, juice, a tote bag, some stationary bits and our Orientation book. In the book, it had our orientation schedule, some articles to read that went along with lectures we sat through and contact information for things like Embassies and such.

Our week look like this: Tuesday – Registration, Dorm Check In & Designated Class Meeting; Wednesday – Lectures, opening ceremony and Welcoming Dinner; Thursday – More lectures, our monitory medical checkup and Korean Language Class; Friday – Lectures and Korean language class; Saturday – Field Trip Day; Sunday – Lectures, Korean Language Class and Lesson prepping; Monday – Lesson Demonstration & Feedback, Closing Ceremony & Dinner.

It was a long week that felt like we’ve been there for months. I think it was all due to our jet lag and stress of being in a new country doing things completely out of our comfort zone. However that didn’t defer us from going out.

A group of us went out looking for a bar to walk to, but ended up getting 치맥 (chimaek) instead. 치맥 is a pairing of fried chicken and beer, served as anju in the evening in many South Korean restaurants, including a number of specialized chains. It was so much fun and we had a good time.

Now as much as we would have stayed out late like any college student, we did have a creafew of 11pm and our classes started at 9. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was served at the campus cafeteria but as Group A & B were doing the orientation around the same time, it got extremely crowded. If you got their pretty late, you had to wait in a long line to get something to eat and there were times where me and whoever I was with only had 20 minutes to eat before rushing off to our next lecture location.

Our lessons and lectures were pretty standard and held good information for us foreign “Guest” teachers. Lesson planning ideas and observation, networking, learning Korean History & Culture, Korean Language Classes & Taekkyeon. Actually, we had a choice between Korean Language Classes or KPop Dance Classes. Majority of us took the language class. However, if you took the KPop dance class, you got to perform with your fellow classmate onstage at the closing ceremony. If was quite fun to watch and there was a lot of extremely good dancers.

Since we were in Chungju-si, we visited the local historic & culture center. It was so much fun to see the countryside and do some local culture activities. We visited a museum, and walked along the river nearby. We also got to decorate some traditional Korean rice cakes, and tie-dye some fabric using local, natural dye. It was great! The last thing we did was race using the indoor rowing machines. We were suppose to go out and have the best rowers actually row out on the river, but the air pollution was so high, it was canceled. Sad, but for the best. Everyone got warnings from the Korean government the night before about it.

In all, it was a very exciting and well done orientation. My only complaint is that since they had both group A & B at the same location, lunch and dinner was extremely hard to get to. I think they should have separated the time each group had to eat so that everyone had a chance to sit and eat comfortably rather than rushed to finish and get out.

안녕 – Jane