If there is one thing an expat can appreciate, it’s returning “home” for a visit.

However, after being away for more than a year in one of the world’s healthiest countries, we were more than a little shocked at the sites we saw when were stateside for three weeks in September 2010 last year.

Don’t get me wrong, Griffin and I appreciate good food, and both acknowledge that we have some pounds we’d like to drop, but it’s so disheartening to see the health of America declining so rapidly.

In Korea, on the other hand, you’ll be hard pressed to find an obese person anywhere.  As the origin of the world’s leading martial art, Tae Kwon Do, along with all the beautiful and well used-hiking trails, exercise is made a priority here.

So is healthy food.  Vegetables, fresh and ripe, garner every table at every meal.  We were surprised and happy to learn that a Korean national food, Kimchi, is listed in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) top five healthiest foods.

Kimchi, that spicy, fermented, national treasure, is eaten three times a day by most Koreans.  According to the WHO, this vegetable and red pepper paste based food is high in fiber, but low in calories, and makes up for 80% of your daily need of Vitamin C and Carotene.  It’s also rich in vitamin A, thiamine (B₁), riboflavin (B₂), calcium, and iron, and contains a number of healthy bacteria.  In addition, it’s extremely good for your immune system and has been proven to fight off viruses and infections.

We’ve often wondered about the process of making Kimchi, and after more than a year, we finally got to experience it first hand.

Thanks to the Ulsan Metropolitan Office of Education, we were sent to a one day “Kimchi School” at the Onggi Festival in Ulsan.

There, we were assigned a helper, and given all the ingredients and tools we needed.  We were surprised that it is such a hands-on process.

After mixing some oil, ground red pepper and garlic together with some chopped onions and radish, we painstakingly smoothed the mixture between each leaf of a special cabbage plant.  Our helper then rolled and wrapped our edible artwork into a picture perfect breeding ground for the helpful bacteria that will ferment the dish and give it the tangy flavor it needs, along with the added nutritional factors Kimchi is known for.  The plants were carefully set into our handy clay pot, and we were told to set them outside for about three days to let them age a little before bringing them in to refrigerate.

We each made three Kimchi cabbages.  (One of which was donated to a local nursing home by each participant.)  This took us about an hour once we got underway.  However, we’ve been told that Korean women make Kimchi only once per year.  I have no idea how long that would take, but I know Americans should give it a try!

Thanks, Korea, for making the world a healthier place, one spicy cabbage leaf at a time.

We have been puzzled by many things in Korea, but none has confused us so much as the Summer Camp preparations.

A long while before things got started, we noticed that many of our married/coupled friends had been sent to separate camps.  This seemed a bit odd and we asked my co-teacher about it.  She said that she had heard from the Office of Education that all known couples were intentionally split so the students would be more of a focus for teachers.  (This is a bit crazy to us since we are in the classrooms for 12 hours per day, excluding meals.)  Since I had not yet changed my last name, they didn’t realize we were married, so we were placed at the same camp.  This was very frustrating to our friends and it’s completely against our culture.  As foreigners, we know that we need to adapt to the Korean ways of life and we accept that.  However, we felt like this was completely against our ways of life and it’s not good for couples to be separated for this long, especially newly weds, as most couples here are.   Everyone raised a bit of a fuss about that and most couples were able to switch to the same camps.

After that, we had to jump through some Korean hoops.

We first were asked to attend a mandatory 5 hour prep meeting 2 months before the camp began.  We were surprised, first by the amount of time they asked for, and then by the fact that the entire meeting was in Korean.  All the foreign teachers left the meeting with about the same amount of information about camp that we came with.

We were given some books and told that we needed to prepare several lesson plans and e-mail them to our assigned Korean co-teacher by the following week.  We’re use to writing lesson plans, so it was no problem.  We were each also given a work book that corresponded to our “Conversation” book and told that we could use those worksheets with our lessons.  That sounded pretty sweet.  Until about a week later.  I turned my lesson plans in 2 days in advance, but received a strange reply.  My co-teacher needed the “worksheet file.”  I wrote back, confused, and said that I didn’t have a file for the worksheets, but since we had the same books, maybe she could just use her own book.  She replied that this wouldn’t work and she needed a file.  I replied that I didn’t have a file because the worksheet didn’t have a CD, and perhaps she could just xerox any worksheets she needed from her own book.  After many back-and-forths about this, she replied that she would expect the file by the following day (Saturday).  I assured her that she would not receive it.  Finally, after speaking to a couple other teachers, all foreign teachers were notified that we were expected to retype all of the worksheets from the pages we needed from the workbooks.  (About 20 pages… many with large corresponding pictures that can’t be typed.)  This was in mind to avoid violating copyright laws that would have been broken by xeroxing the worksheets.  Memo to the Office of Education:  Retyping someone else’s worksheets is still a copyright violation.

After many ups and downs about this from all the foreign teachers, most teachers found a way around it.  I ended up photographing my worksheets and was assured they would be printed for the camp.  Upon reaching camp, I found that my worksheets had not been printed, so they were promptly xeroxed by my co-teacher.  Hmmm.

The next crazy thing came about while we were on vacation in China.  Griffin received an e-mail and immediately started to laugh.  He told me I had to read it because it was unbelievable.  The Office of Education had decided that the students needed to spend as much time as possible with the foreign teachers, so we were being required to bunk with the students in their dorm rooms.  We decided that this needed no reply from us.  We knew that the other foreign teachers would not allow this to proceed.  As we suspected, within the next 24 hours, both of our inboxes were flooded with replies to this requirement.  Some gave reasons why this would not work, others simply stated that it was uncomfortable.  Everyone flat out refused to do it.  This requirement was rescinded with a couple of days.

We’ve often wondered why the Office of Education doesn’t have at least one foreign teacher they contact when they are thinking of sending out e-mails/requirements like those above.  It seems they could save a lot of time and energy if someone told them it would never fly.

Once camp got started, everything sailed pretty smoothly.  We love camps because the class sizes are around 16 students… down from our normal 36 students per class.  With this number of students, it’s easier to teach, play and get to know the students over the course of the 3 week intensive camp.

The college campus where we stayed is new and really beautiful.  We enjoyed getting to benefit from the electronics placed in the classrooms that made life easier and more complicated at the same time.  The university that hosted us is home to students studying Science and Technology and the campus has only been around for about 3 years.  Unfortunately, it is in the middle of nowhere, literally surrounded by rice fields.  It was kind of nice to get away.

We enjoyed our students and found that teaching elementary students is much easier than middle schoolers.  My camp students operate on much higher level of English than my regular middle school kids.

We were pretty surprised at the amount of information these kids are forced to take in in such a short amount of time.  Each class studied several lessons per day on each of the the topics of  vocabulary, conversation, listening and grammar.  During only a 3 week period, the students learned an average of 500 vocabulary words!  I won’t ask if they still remember!

We enjoy camp, but could do without the pre-camp “festivities.”

Here is a video I put together of the first trip we took.  This is part 1 of 2 and in this video we make a traditional Korean Mask and visit a traditional Korean Paper Factory.  Enjoy!

For pictures from the trip, please check out our Flickr set here.

We were picked up early at Griffin’s school and taken to our new home for the next three weeks, Young San University.  We checked into our dorm room and were a little disheartened to learn that it was on the top floor of a 6 story walk-up.  We then went down to the classrooms and interviewed students in order to aid in their level placement.  From there we were ushered to orientation, given our teaching materials and then headed off to begin teaching.  That’s right, we received our teaching materials about one hour before our first class.  Fortunately, we were also assigned a teacher’s assistant and given small class sizes.  Having only 16 students was a wonderful change from our usual 36.

The days were pretty grueling, and we found that it’s not easy to work 12 hour shifts everyday.  The schedule was confusing and often changed on a moment’s notice.  We fell into bed every night completely exhausted.

On the other hand, we were able to really get to know our students.  It was so fun to play games with them and get to interact with them on a daily basis.  We really miss our camp students!

Here are some highlights from camp:

Up early, bus is late, check in… 6th floor?, freezing rain, no heat in the hallways, octopus for lunch, fried fish for breakfast, 7-eleven, off campus for MEXICAN food!, hit up Costco, play practice,12 hour days, field trip to Busan Aquarium, staying in Busan for the weekend, Monday’s coming, up early, students are back, more 12 hour days, playing outside? too cold, making grilled Ham and Cheese sandwiches with the campers, more play practice, field trip to BEXCO, watching Mr. Bubbles the Bubbleist, Home for the weekend, back to Busan, students arrive, more crazy classes, making Dduck Boki with the campers, more play practice, the end is near, closing ceremony, time for the plays!, Valerie’s class wins 2ND PLACE!, pack up and head home exhausted, booked a trip and heading to Hong Kong and Japan in 2 days.  Crazy?  Yes.

__________________________________________