The Rise of Routines

OK, it’s no secret to anyone who is reading this that this update is long overdue.  I won’t spend much time making mewling apologies, but we all know that it’s deserved.  So here it is: I’m sorry that Kelsey and I are so bad at the internet.  Particularly me.  I know we said we would keep this “online journal” (I still and always will refuse the word “blog”) so everyone could track our time in Korea and share our adventures, but we failed at that intention very quickly.  Sorry.

Anyway;

As the days started to fly by, we were busy.  Getting into the groove of teaching and figuring out how to live in this strange new country were very taxing endeavors.  Now the weeks are starting to fly by and it’s nearly December.  Holy smokes.  So things are moving right along and though there are daily adventures and funny occurrences, there is not a whole lot happening that warrants an urgent online journal post.  “Nothing to write home about,” as they would say.  So, since we needed to update so desperately, I figured it was a good time to describe our routines; hoping to shed some light on the peculiarities of daily life in Korea.

I reckon this first post will describe the daily routines that are the same regardless of the day (weekdays, of course), and then I’ll talk about our weekly routines later.

Morning

A few weeks ago I decided to reverse my lifelong habit of sleeping in.  I decided that the benefits of being an early riser were too good to ignore any longer.  That said, our morning routine is quite new.

We get up nowadays at 6:30am, which is obscenely early for me.  Luckily, my Korean phone came with the Cavalry “First Call” reveille as an alarm tone, which jolts me out of bed like a bolt of lightning to my soul.  First, I get up and turn on the hot water.  There’s a control panel by the light switch where you have to hit a button if you want the option of hot water.  It takes about five minutes to warm up (then you have to be careful, cause it’s hot).  Then: wash face with cold water/work out for 30 minutes (or study Korean—depending on the day)/shower, etc/have our breakfast and devotional.

Koreans eat the same kind of food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  So a typical breakfast for them is rice, kimchi, and some sort of meat or veggie dish.  Because of that cereal is really expensive and there’s not much variety.  So Kelsey and I have been trying to kick the habit, and take the time to make a more substantial breakfast.  We usually have eggs, toast, tea, and sometimes oatmeal.  Then we leave the apartment by 8:15 so we can both be at school by 8:30.

My walk to school is along the main road of our town on the uneven patterned-brick sidewalk.  I pass by as all of the shops are opening for the day.  There’s one main intersection where I have to cross the street, and that’s always a bit precarious because Korean drivers are very unpredictable.  On market day it’s a bit of a pain because everyone is setting up their stalls along the sidewalk and there’s one vendor that sets his table with merchandise (belts and miscellaneous junk) to take up the whole sidewalk and then puts his chair in the road.  So in order to get around him, one must walk in traffic.  It’s great.

Kelsey’s walk is a lovely jaunt through the rice paddies, veggie gardens, and some ramshackle houses.

School Day

(Jordan’s average day.  Kelsey’s is similar, to an extent)

I teach either four or five regular classes a day.  The rest of the time is for planning lessons, piddling around on the internet, or playing ping-pong with my co-teacher, Seo Jeong-Woo (Dylan).  I have four 6^th grade classes and three 5^th grade classes, each of which I have several times a week.  Dylan and I try not to rely on the textbook CD-ROM too much, because most of the activities are kind of stupid.  It’s great to do our own activities and games and stuff with the students, but it takes a lot of work to keep up.

We have lunch at 12:10 every day.  The cafeteria food is really quite good.  It’s a nice way to experience different Korean foods.  There’s always rice, some sort of soup, kimchi, another veggie dish, and then a meat dish.  Except for Wednesdays, which are basically “other” days.  Sometimes we have American(ish) food, Indian, “Italian”—all Koreanized, but still a nice change.

After lunch, Dylan and I go have a coffee in the “teacher’s room,” which is basically the main office.  Apparently Koreans always drink instant coffee, and from little paper cups.  There was quite a bit of excitement about a month ago when we got a machine that dispenses a paper cup and then fills it with “coppy” or “cappachino,” which basically taste the same.  After coffee, Dylan and I usually play ping-pong for 20 minutes or so (depending on whether or not we have a 5^th period class).

Kelsey and I both have “after-school” classes that vary from day to day.  These are extra work, but also extra pay!

The school day ends at 4:30 for us.  The students are done at 2:30, except for their extracurricular stuff.

Evening

Evenings are when we have the least consistency.  The only real objectives are to eat dinner and relax.  Occasionally we’ll see people or have something special going on.  Dinner has been difficult to figure out because we don’t understand how to use half of the ingredients at the grocery store.  Also, we don’t have an oven.  It never occurred to me how little use most Asian cuisine has for ovens until we got here.  Korean food is no exception.  Where there should be an oven there is a fridge designed just for kimchi.

We try to be in bed by 11:00.

Conclusion

So.  In conclusion…our day to day workweek is actually quite ordinary, despite being in Korea.

I promise to post more about everyday life soon.  We’ll get better at this online journal thing.

--Jordan