Farewell to Orientation

This is a little out of order, but I wanted to post these pictures up. These were taken on the day we were picked up by our co-teachers. We loaded up into buses, and drove from Daejeon (대전) to Gumi (구미). We had one last lunch together with everyone moving to Gyeonbuk province, and then we were individually picked up by our co-teachers.

This is Darren (left) and Andy (right). Good guys.

The Americans! Son (left), Stephanie (obvious), and Ryan (right).

This picture is just to stress the Korean cuteness factor. Anything that can be made cute or pretty is.

Ryan with his manly cup of coffee. It takes a real man to drink from something so pink and floral.

The lovely Helen from England. I think she got something with chocolate (probably a mocha).

And this was my cafe latte. It's probably the most cute and pretty cup of coffee I have ever had in my life.

Saying goodbye (for now) to my wonderful Korean orientation teachers Juhyun Do (aka "J") and Daniel. Great, great people. I actually teared up when I had to say goodbye to these two.

Orientation Part 2

I had 8 days of a fairly intense orientation for EPIK. We arrived in Daejeon (대전) on Feb. 20 and finished on the 28th. I made some great friends both Western and Korean. I almost cried when we all had to say goodbye. The pictures I'm posting are from in the classroom and from our field trip day to a traditional farm village.

Andy from England and Stephanie from Wisconsin. Stephanie and I actually live in the same city now, just on opposite sides.

This was my desk partner and final project partner Darren from Austrailia.

This is Son from San Diego. He's pretty comical.

Our fantastic, fantastic class teacher Jay.

This is our class on the field trip.

Peter from Canada and Chris from England.

Andy and Beth (Canada) eating bibimbap 비빔밥 at the village's cafeteria.

Looking down the table at our whole class eating.

Grace from New Zealand and I eating our 비빔밥.

 This is a traditional Korean game which is basically a seesaw, and you work together to get some height.

If you get the timing down right, the two people can actually get really high in the air.

We made cell phone accessories. This is Tyler from Florida. He is now living and teaching on Jeju Island.

This is Daniel. He was our assistant teacher, and he was super helpful and kind.

Jay and Daniel working together to make a cell phone accessory. They were super cute, like older sister and younger brother.

This is Charles. He is another EPIK staff member. He is really funny.

This is Courtney from New York. He are posing in front of our scarves that we dyed ourselves.

This is a Korean tractor. We all got to take a ride on the back.

Everyone was super excited to have a turn on the tractor.

The mountains everywhere are really beautiful. I think that everything will be even more beautiful once the trees start blooming.

This is our class learning how to make tofu!

This is our tofu!

Orientation

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted anything. I am currently in the midst of orientation for the EPIK program. We are in Daejeon (대젼) at an enclosed campus. Today has been the first full day. We've been in classes since 9AM, and we have one more to go after dinner. But this is one of the few long days like this, and all of the classes have been very interesting and helpful so far.

I'll post a few pictures of some of the other teachers here with me, and the campus area.

 The girl on the left is my roommate Katie, from Ohio. To the right is Travis, from New York City.

This is looking down the table at the other teachers. We stopped at a local bar just across the street from our campus. The beer on the table is Hite and Cass, which are both Korean beers. The smaller green bottle is Soju, which is a Korean liquor made from rice. It takes a bit like a lower-alcohol vodka.

These are three guys that are in my class with me. The guy on the left is Chris, from London. In the middle is Son, from San Diego. I can't remember the guy's name on the right (I'm not the best when it comes to names).

This is looking down from the second floor patio/garden of the cafeteria building.

This is also from that second floor patio.

This is the building where all of our lectures are held. I'm not sure if you can see it, but the banner says: "EPIK Lecture Building".  That's also where they had our opening ceremony for the Orientation where a group of local high school boys played a traditional Korean style of drumming called "samunori" (사무노리). They were incredible!

This is a quick shot of the road going down to the entrance to the whole campus area. I'm not sure it comes through since it was cloudy, but there are mountains in the background. There are mountains everywhere in Korea (at least in all the parts I've been so far). It's really beautiful.