Pohang (포항)

As of Monday, I moved into my new home in Pohang! We live in an apartment complex (one of many) 10 minutes from 포항대흥 Elementary School where I'll be teaching. My host dad drove my principal and co-teacher to Yonsei University in Seoul to pick me up. My host mom is an amazing cook and when I told her samgyeopsal (barbeque pork) is one of my favorite Korean dishes, my family took me out for a samgyeopsal picnic by the river in Yeongcheon. They have two sons who attend the elementary school I'll be teaching at. One of them is studying in the Philippines for the year so I won't be seeing much of him but my other host brother is home and is usually "studying and playing" (his response when I ask him what he did or will do for the day). His cousin is in middle school and is also staying at their place until school starts for her. Sometimes I play soccer with them at the elementary school. Classes don't start until September 1st so I won't be teaching until then. My co-teachers have been very welcoming. One of them took me around Pohang after I first went to visit the school and meet some of the administrative staff and the other teachers. Pohang is a suburb of about 500,000 people on the east coast of Korea. It's famous for POSCO the steel industry and POSTECH one of the top science and technology universities in Korea. (It's kind of like Bethlehem...) I still have a lot of exploring to do while I'm here. Unfortunately there won't be any pictures with this post because my laptop can't access the internet at my host family's house so I'm just using their computer for now. More pictures and stories to be posted later!

IETC, TKD, and the DMZ

Last weekend a bunch of us went on the IETC (Intensive English Training Camp) trip with KEY Club (I still have yet to find out what the place is called). It reminded me of times I went camping with Travel Club at Kansai Gaidai. We were divided into different groups of KEY Club members and ETAs and competed against each other in games like “I am a model.” One person is the “model” and the others are blindfolded. Each blindfolded person feels the person before him to figure out how he/ she is standing and tries to imitate it and so on. The next game was called “Suck and blow” where you get a piece of paper and pass it down the line mouth to mouth. Our team did pretty well with that one. They seem to like to line us up girl-guy in these kinds of games. You get some pretty awkward/ interesting pictures out of it.


After that, we got in the pool with all our clothes on (I learned that people don’t wear bathing suits in Korea) and played water polo, trying to knock down empty bottles on the side of the pool with a ball while holding hands with a partner so we could only use one hand to get the ball. After dinner, we had a Miss Key pageant where we dressed up one freshmen KEY Club guy and one male ETA from each group in drag. They came down the “walkway” and demonstrated a special talent (which was usually some kind of “sexy dance”) and the judges chose a KEY Club winner and an ETA winner. I don’t know the name of the KEY Club winner, but he made a better looking girl than I did!


This week was the last week of Taekwondo classes. On Monday we were tested for yellow belt which involved going over the moves we learned in group of five in front of the kwanjangnim and the rest of the class. Needless to say, everyone passed. The rest of the week involved learning a routine of twelve steps which goes along with getting the yellow belt.



On Tuesday I actually twisted my ankle pretty badly. I did it right in front of the kwanjangnim because we started sparring and I didn’t really know what I was doing so I was hopping around trying to kick and then back away and landed on my ankle. I’ve never twisted it that badly before, but it's in the process of getting better. I went back for the last class on Thursday though (and made a fool of myself messing up the form we learned in front of the class). After class, we went out for dinner and patbinsu (a dessert that is a mix of fruit, red bean, shaved ice and ice cream) with the kwanjangnim. It was pretty cool getting to know our teacher outside of Taekwondo. He told us if we want to continue at our placements, just give him a call and he will get us in contact with a Taekwondo academy in our area. Our translator told us the kwajangnim has a seventh level black belt. Every province has a Taekwondo "master" who is the best in the province and that's our kwanjangnim. He's also part of the Taekwondo Association! Talk about making connections...

Yesterday we went to the DMZ which was an outing hosted by Hwacheon’s county officials. On the way there we stopped by a tomato festival in Hwacheon and they gave us shirts and we joined in a random parade.


We took a boxes of tomatoes home with us and they actually taste pretty good, sweet, even though I usually don’t like eating tomatoes by themselves. At the DMZ, it’s actually really beautiful there because people aren’t allowed to go in there so there’s a lot of untouched nature and wildlife. One of the tour guides told us if we took one step into the DMZ, we would probably be shot. There were signs right outside the fence warning of mines. We weren't allowed to take pictures of most of the area.