July E-mails Continued

July 26, 2009

So today at lunch the Korean student that we sat with was obsessed with the fact that my name was Meghan. He was so impressed that I was asked lots of questions about my boyfriend, Shia LaBeouf. Haha. This country makes the best generalizations/assumptions. You would fit in here, they love the transformers….

July 20, 2009

Ahh i just found a cute coffee shop and had a sweet cheese panini...best korean food ever!

July 19, 2009

Hello!!

Well I am back from Songnisan. It was a wonderful weekend, so beautiful! Yesterday I hiked up a mountain. It was probably the biggest physical challenge I have ever accomplished in my life. I thought at many points that my body was going to collapse, but we all pulled through together and made it to two different peaks. The view was well worth the pain. It took about 6.5 hours to go up to both peaks and then to come back down. The hotel was authentic, so after a long day of hiking I got to sleep on a mat on the floor. Today my body is pretty sore, not to mention I still can't laugh without my abs hurting from the sit ups we had to do at TKD on Thursday.

 We are treated like royalty by the Fulbright office. The food was amazing this weekend and we had lots of ice cream! I am exhausted to say the least. We just got back and have a meeting in five minutes, I have mandatory study hours after that, then office hours and need to prepare my lesson for tomorrow. I am teaching my first Camp Fulbright lesson plan to the 5th and 6th grade campers tomorrow. We are learning about emotions; I think it will be pretty cool.

July 19, 2009

I think about you all of the time because I could really use some Kara study time here in Korea. My language classes are very difficult. I am learning quickly what rote learning looks like and how hard it is on students with various learning styles. haha.

July 16, 2009

So today was a big day for me here in Korea…I failed my first Korean test! The yellow notes that I hung all over our house did not really pull through for me. With four hours of class per day we have gone from learning the alphabet to conjugating verbs in one week. We have daily quizzes with 20ish vocabulary words each and spelling counts. This is going to be interesting…

Also, thanks to my high arches I got my first blood blister from taekwondo yesterday. We had to run around our gym 20 times and do all of these funny frogger jumps over other people’s backs. 

The food here is frightening. We have octopus at lest twice a day and often it is whole. They do not try and disguise it, but instead they just add sauce. The rice usually pulls me through and the garlic makes me smell funny. I have never hated eating food so much before in my life. I have been able to have coffee. One of the guys down the hall and I bought some ground beans, a water boiler, and I have my press.

The crew here is pretty diverse, but all really nice. Our schedule is crazy with at least 7 hours of scheduled stuff on weekdays and 5ish on weekends, in addition to lesson plans, studying and weekly papers. My failing grade has put me in supervised study time this week…aka detention. We went out with some Korean college students last Friday and learned lots of funny drinking games. Annnddd I even sang norabong (karaoke)….

 

E-mails

July 15, 2009

This weekend we are going to a Buddhist temple where we can have some free time to hike and eat toast for breakfast. We start teaching at Camp Fulbright next week so they said that hiking around the Buddhist temples is a great way to relax before the chaos.

July 13, 2009

This past weekend was great. On Friday, we went out with some Korean students on campus, played lots of new drinking games and sang norabong (karaoke). We had workshops all day Saturday and on Saturday night I just relaxed  and tried to get some rest. I did meet some nice Russian friends when I was sitting outside under a pagoda. They are in town for an international taekwondo tournament being held on campus. Sunday I had workshops all afternoon and studied for the rest of the day.  I am getting very little sleep and it’s starting to catch up to me.

July 7, 2009

We had our language test this morning and that was pretty much a short written part and talk with our korean teachers. It wasn't too bad and I was placed in the beginner group. After the test we were all put in one room in our academic building and told that we as a group were being put in isolation for the next 24 hours. One person was not feeling well this morning (no flu like symptoms at all- they think he was just dehydrated from his flight) but was sent to a doctor to be sure. Kangwon University wanted all of us to wear masks and be required to stay in our dorm for the next 24 hours. After our coordinators had some meetings we do not have to wear the masks and are allowed to stay within one building to have our courses this afternoon. People are now walking around on campus in masks. I still sort of feel like I am at camp. I think of you often.

 

July 5, 2009

So after about 35 hours I finally reached Chuncheon at about 9:30am korea time. We had class and orientation stuff all day and just finished dinner. There is nothing like octopus and kimchi for dinner after having been awake for most of the past 48 hours. The people here are great and the program is very very organized. Our schedule is packed, but I am looking forward to most of the things we will be doing. Luckily I have an internet connection in my dorm room so I am able to use the internet at my leisure.

July 5, 2009

I made it but I am not near a phone. I’m glad that I have my ipod.

Love you

 

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Beginning today I will chronicle my year journey in South Korea. I have spent the past seven weeks adjusting to what will be an eventful, challenging and rewarding experience in one of the most fascinating countries I have ever visited. For the past few years when I pictured myself graduating from college and moving on to the step, I had a hard time seeing myself anywhere. I had an itch to travel and see the world before settling down, getting used to a earning a salary, gaining tenure, and as my brother Michael said, “before buying furniture.” I was very fortunate that my education and experiences at The University of Dayton were aligned with what the Fulbright Scholarship Board was looking for in a future English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Korea. In April, I gladly accepted their offer of a graduate fellowship and in May I graduated from UD. During May and June I spent some quality time my family and I departed for Korea on July 3^rd.

            The schedule that I was faced with during orientation was grueling and I was unable to start my blog at that time, although, I was able to share many of my experiences with my family through e-mail. I have decided that I will share some of the e-mails that I wrote throughout orientation to give the reader of this blog insight into my orientation to Korea. The next few regular blogs will be sharing my experiences from this past week, my first week living in the city of Cheonan. 

            The name of my blog “Cheonan jeong” refers to the place where I will be living and teaching for this next year, Cheonan, and the bond that Korean people form between them. I have included an excerpt from the publication, “Significance of “Jeong” in Korean Culture and Psychotherapy” by Christopher K. Chung, M.D. & Samson Cho, M.D. to better explain the concept.

Jeong is difficult to define. One Korean-English dictionary defines it as “feeling, love, sentiment, passion, human nature, sympathy, heart.” Although it is complicated to introduce a clear definition of jeong, it seems to include all of the above as well as more basic feelings, such as attachment, bond, affection, or even bondage. By introducing the characteristics of jeong, I may be able to better clarify the meanings of jeong. One of the important characteristics is its “location.” Jeong seems located not only inside of our hearts but also outside. In other words, the location of jeong is between individuals. It can be difficult to understand an emotion as being seated outside an individual’s heart, yet it may be related to the idea of collective emotion…In Korea, “we” often means “I, bonded by jeong, to you,” whereas in English, “we” just represents any multiple “I’s.”(http://www.prcp.org/publications/sig.pdf).

I have found that jeong has already become a large part of my Korean life and it will continue to guide my actions while also having a large impact on the relationships that I am forming.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope that you enjoy the stories that I will be sharing throughout my grant year in Korea.  : )