Unfortunate Events Seem So Unavoidable

Tonight I found out from a friend that a sophomore at Spelman College was shot and killed at Clark Atlanta University. Apparently, a fight had broke out by an outside party and the spelman student was killed by the stray bullet. It really makes me so mad that this bs had to happen. When I went to Spelman I always felt that even though our school was in a bad area maybe the community around us would feel inspired by what we were trying to do; enough to make sure that situations such as this would not happen on our campuses where individuals are trying to learn and make better lives for themselves. Unfortunately, I have been far too optimistic about the world we live in. How do you even explain something like this to this girls family? How are students going to feel safe again? And where the HELL was security? This is supposed to be an academic institution my God!

I hope and pray that the students of the AUC take action and speak out against this situation and issues that lead to it.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/spelman-student-killed-on-130043.html?cxntlid=brkng_nws_bnr

So today was my first day as song-sang neem or teacher at my school Sin-gye Elementary. It was not too bad, for this first week I am only doing introductions. So I made a power point about me, my family, and friends, and ofcourse random facts about Marley. I think it went well. For one of the slides I have a picture of different flags and students have to guess where I am from. Many students guessed Canada and England, and I got a couple of Africas and one Jamaica lol. But for the most part everyone figuered I was from the US. It was so funny to see how excited students were to see a foreign teacher. Also, just the way teachers are treated out here in general is really refreshing. Students bow and are so polite and respectful, I don't think we will ever see that in the US. Plus, some students are at school literally from sun up to sundown, after school lets out at 3pm some students go to an academy or what they call private school to study more English and are usually there until 10pm at night! But for the most part I felt good about my first day, there were some awkward moments; like at lunch. At orientation we were told that a lot of Koreans don't like to talk during meals because they are in a hurry and are trying to just hurry up and shovel their food down. One of the previous EPIK teachers told us that lunch one day his co-teacher had to tell him that he talked too much during lunch! lol. So needless to say, I wasn't trying to strike up any conversations so the silence was a little awkward. But my co-teacher, Bo-mi is always really sweet and made some small talk with me. That's all for 1st day news can't wait to meet all my classes next week!

The Early Stages of Life in Daejeon, Korea

Last week I just finished my EPIK Orientation. I was really impressed with the welcome we as teachers in training received from EPIK. I already miss my class leaders and truly appreciate all they have done to help us out. I met some cool people, made some awesome friends, and saw breath-taking sights.

It is slowly hitting me that I am actually living in Korea. I moved into my "apartment" which is more like a room, three days ago. After three hours of scrubbing and bleach Dawn and I put the homey touches on it and I felt a little bit at home. In orientation they described the stages of culture shock as: the honeymoon phase, the everything sucks phase, the adjustment phase, and the reverse culture shock phase. For me the honeymoon phase was short lived, it comes back every now and then but mostly I am missing home. The everything sucks phase comes and goes, but I am really working on maintaing a positive attitude while out here; I think it's absolutely vital for survival. The adjustment phase has yet to come but I am on the right path. And finally the reverse culture shock we are suppose to feel when we get back home, Ican't even phathom right now because it is just too far away.

I've had many memorable adventures already, such as getting lost at 1 am and not knowing where we live. Most of the time the taxi drivers speak only Korean and since we know barely any Korean everytime the driver says something we shake our heads yes, it's pretty hilarious. We finally caught on and had our co-teacher write our address in hangeul (Korean).

I am so blessed though to have a friend from home with me. Dawn is a great travel buddy and I definitely don't think I would be able to make it through this experience without her. This weekend we did our shopping and found that Costco in Korea is really overrated and over-priced probably because of importing a lot of the merchandise. Nevertheless, I bought a block of mild cheddar cheese for 9,000 won; the taste of cheese in Korea is just too different for my taste buds. Tomorrow I will get all my documents straightened out and meet some of the teachers at my school, maybe some students...yay!