Interesting experiences as the year closes.

Getting colder here in Cheonan, South Korea. Can't believe that I've spent almost a year here; having arrived in February and now coming up to December! It's been this long since I started, man, what can I say has happened thus far?

I've started with Kindy and Ele, a steep slope of development and reaching an awesome peak before being thrown down like Sparta before I bounced back again (with some help from my friends) and eventually found myself South of the Capital teaching Elementary School students. I've made new friends, met new people, got into new things; know what I want to do with myself now and for the future, and am quite content to be where I am.

Korea has been a rather interesting experience none the less, things are very different here then they would be back home, and though not always as a positive notion, I want to actually touch on a three things I've noticed and want to get off my chest as either interesting, unusual, or just plain silly.

Business Organization
For the most part, business tend to do what they need to do get stuff done; influenced both by world commence with a close resemblance to American economic;

most business continue to work the same way they would back home. Hogwans however are slightly different. For the time I've been here, I have experience and been told many different stories of the oddities of Hogwans. I admit, my experience thus far has been fairly organized and without much error, but due to recent slips from my own workplace, I felt I should touch on this subject to make sure people know and perhaps even do something about it.

First and foremost, Hogwans run a rather unusual business compared to anything back home; as always money is important, and schools sometimes do whatever they can to keep costs. Many people I've talked to have told me stories of how others were let go because of budget cuts, or the company goes bankrupt and shuts down. Its terrible to experience, but because Hogwans are both very common and in a cut-throat industry, its either sink or swim. That sorta of issue hasn't caused a problem for me, and I'm lucky to not have to worry about it, however, it has occurred once.

During the winter months, around the end of November, the classes of Grade 6 move on to middle school and the schedule changes to organize the other classes to fill in the students left. This is a fairly simple idea; however, not being told this idea until the actual day of the change is a rather problematic issue. Having arrived at 3pm when I usually start and not seeing my kids even past 3:40pm, I can't help but ask what's going on, which is when I was told about the change and the front-desk girls spent a half-hour running around and sorting out my schedule. What started as having 24~ classes a week, was shorten to 14 classes, which isn't bad, but just a surprise as I have so much spare time. In the end, it's not all bad; my work environment is great and my director can keep on top of most things, any questions are easily answered by my fellow teachers too, so it's a good place to be.

Parking and Traffic

Parking and Traffic in South Korea is A LOT different than back home, people here tend to drive a bit more aggressively than in Canada; there aren't as many accidents either which is a rather curious thing to consider. When I say aggressive though, I go a bit beyond what you may see in Rush hour, I'm talking buses and taxi's blitzing through red lights, the certain lack of Stop signs and people going when pedestrians are crossing. Its gets ugly at points; not to mention how fast some people drive and scooters.


Oh geeze, the scooters. Having ridden one myself, I always assumed Scooters had to be cautious and careful as they are smaller and easier to miss; not in Korea, Scooters (gas mostly) are driving all over the place, on roads, sidewalks, anywhere.

However, the WORST I've seen since I arrived is PARKING. The motto here for parking seems to be anyplace is a space; what do I mean by that? Look at these pictures. I was walking to E-mart nearby, just on my phone when I bump into this car on the sidewalk. To add insult to injury, I bump into a second car soon after. It seems like many people just park where there is space; unlike back home where there are regulations, there doesn't seem to be such thing here. Everyone parks everywhere even if it slows down traffic. It just blows my mind and gives me another good reason to not drive here.

Public Safety Measures
This is probably the touchiest subject in regards to what's happened this year, so I'm going to keep this breif; there's a slight lack in the safety of public persons, not just because of traffic, but because of general rules and regulations of what goes on around the city. For those who don't know, the sinking of the Sewol Ferry off the souther coast of South Korea was the most tragic incident to relate to a lack of safety procedure. Due to the various reasons noted in the news, from lack of conduct for the loading to the crew telling the passengers to remain, 300 people, mostly students, died. All over Korea, there were memorial set-ups, using the color yellow to show their memory of the sinking ship. People would write there respects on these little slips and tie them to tree's and lines around the memorial. It was a tragic incident, one that could have been avoided if procedure and safety rules were followed, but they weren't, now a company is in shambles and the family's of the 300 children are left distraught.

Recently however, there was a concert going on in Seongnam for a Pop-concert with the band 4Minute. 16 people who were standing atop a ventilation grate caused it to collapse 20 meters to their deaths in a parking garage below. This incident, as the news stated;
"The incident comes as South Korea still struggles with the aftermath of a ferry disaster in April that left more than 300 people dead or missing....The tragedy exposed regulatory failures that appear to have allowed the ferry Sewol to set off with far more cargo than it could safely carry." -The guardian

To add a sense of insult, the individual responsible for planning the concert committed suicide because of the deaths; certainly not one to live with the fact the failure in safety caused those 16 people to die when they probably wouldn't had it been done correctly.

Perhaps there is still much to change; South Korea is a well-developing country, but these incidents scar its reputation as a established Asian nation; hopefully it will be a wake up call to those needing to act and do something about this.

Living the life and paying the bills.

My collapsible bike.

         Life in Cheonan has been swell these past two months. A lot has happend since I've moved into this quite place south of Seoul, and I have got to say its quite a nice little shin dig I have going here. My current room is quite spacious, with enough room to set up a small table for panting and building minatures. It also has a 'breezeway' with my Washing machine and space for a drying rack (as well as my Bike which I acquired for use of getting around.) Likewise, I am also very close to grocery stores and toy stores, so supplies of needed items like foodstuffs and trinkets for the kids is an easy matter, as well as any other piece of necessity I need.

The only real drawback is Cheonan is a newly developed city, and the location I'm in is quite spares in terms of things to do; sure there are two shopping malls/department stores and a movie theater, but there really isn't much else unless I take the subway or bus downtown (which isn't too far from me either; a 15 min walk or 10 min bike ride.) Still, I don't mind being here, and I've made a lot of progress in seeing places and meeting new people, but most of all, I absolutely am in love with my work; I enjoy its amazing schedule, easy criteria and lesson material, and the children are quite capable and easy to handle; a definitive improvement from dealing with younger kids (Grades 3-6 are who I handle.)

My work begins Monday, starting at 3:00pm in the afternoon and going till 9pm in the evening. This varies depending on days. On Monday and Friday I start at 3pm, on Tuesday and Thursday, I start a little later at 4:20, and on Wednesday I start at 3:20. I have several classes a day, most 40 minutes in length with one or two being 50. The kid count per class can be as small as three to four as as big as 10 to even 14. It isn't hard to handle classes that size, and the work criteria is easy to follow and explain; most of the time we get the work done pretty quickly and I'm left with a good 10 minutes for the kids to watch Youtube vids for thins that relate to the lessons, like Mosquitoes or colours, or food stuffs. Quite interesting material, and all to help them better understand English for their higher grade levels to follow.

 I'm actually in an interesting setup with this school. I have to travel each Wednesday from Cheonan to its neighboring city of Asan to teach at another branch of the company I work for. Asan starts from 3:20 and ends at 8:20, a little earlier than most. The kids are also great and many, even the youngest kids, are really smart and active, I'm always blown away by how helpful they want to be and how edger they are to learn.

Twenty bucks for maple syrup!

Besides teaching, I am still living in my own apartment and have to cook and clean for myself. Neither are a problem as my room is one giant space with smaller rooms connected; a kitchen, bathroom and the laundry breezeway are easily accessible and detached from the main room where I do most of my living; so cleaning them all is fairly simple and with a quick vroom of my dust-buster/vacuum and I can clean most of the dust without a problem. Buying food is also fairly easy. I live near a Homeplus express (Grocery store) and both an E-mart (Korean Walmart) and E-mart Traders (Bulk Supplies Mall). All three places are great fopr buying foods both domestic and imported, though prices on certain things are quite out there. Still, a weeks worth of food can be around 30-80 dollars for things like Milk, eggs, fish or chicken, bread, and some veggies. Its quite surprising the stock they have and its great to play around with the food I get and cook with.

Another fun thing I have to do is pay my own Electricity and Gas bill each month. At my prior job, the school paid the bills for us, deducting the cost from our paycheck. This time, I have to pay it myself at my local KEB (the bank branch I use) and have found it to be surprisingly easy and I took the time to put it down to show ppl who may not know but will have to do the same thing as me.

1. Get Bill
For security reasons, the important details are hidden, but you will get a bill like this in your mailbox once or twice a month for gas and electricity. It will be wellow with three/four sections on it. Each part tells you about your cost, how it measures to other months, and general info (which I actually don't know well as I can't translate it XD)

2.  Take to local Bank
Weither it be KEB, KB or WOORI, take your bill to your local bank, there, you will have to find a machine like this one that's specific to paying bills. Once you find it, start by putting in your bank card into the machine.

 3. Take off the bottom section with the OCR on it.
This is the primary piece of paper we will need to pay the bill. Remove it from the bill (it tears away easy) and get ready to use it to pay your bill off. Most bills are paid this way, the OCR is the actual code and information regarding your account and is what helps to transfer the money to the right place when you pay.

4. Push the button labeled "지 로 공과금"which means "Support Utilities" (I think it means to pay utility bills) , this will bring you to the next section and show you a display on preparing that peice of paper we took from our bill. This time, you have to tear off the end with your cost price and address, just leaving the part with the OCR on for payment.

Once that's done, insert the bill and you're good to go.




 5. Pay the fee.
Once the bill is accepted by the machine, you get to see how much the cost comes to as well as any other costs (depending on how many bills you put in or if there are any added costs to the one bill.) Now, push the green button, which of course means yes and then put your code in and boom, payment is sent and you're free from paying until the next month.


   Despite moving away from Seoul, I still play airsoft on the weekends. I hadn't done so for the past month or so as situational problems within the Airsoft community here in Korea had risen, and several police raids had put everyone on edge, Apparently, someone within the community had went to the police with information and told them of several games that were happening. It brought a huge damper on many players, and even a few people I know got arrested, gear taken and destroyed by the police.  It really boils my blood that someone within this community wanted to do something so low; we're all here to have fun, we're all here to enjoy good, wholesome survival games; and someone has to go and throw poop into it.

Still, games have begun to happen again, and this month of October has been full of em, To get to Seoul, I only have to take a KTX, Korean Transit Express Train into Seoul. It takes only half an hour to 45 minuts depending, but its quick painless, and only 13,000 Won. One cool thing I found, even if the train is full, it doesn't stop the KTX attendants from selling 'standing tickets'. For 11,000 Won, you can get a ticket to stand in the train, and a lot of people do this if the seats are full. I've done it too, you can stand in the mid-sections between cars or the food cart (which has tables). The ride is smooth and always punctual, so you're never late for your appointment.

Well, thats all for now, with Halloween coming up, I'm prepping for a two day extravaganza at my school with me explaining to the kids the history of halloween. I hope you fellow readers are holding out well and look forward to seeing you when we talk about NaNoWriMo in South Korea!

Military History in South Korea

Greetings again readers from the Internet, I know its been a few months since I last made a post, but things have been a bit crazy and I've only recently been able to settle down and sort stuff out, which gave me a bit of time to work on this next post.

As many of you may know, I had lost my prior employment in Korea, and had spent the past month or so looking for work, well fellow readers, I have indeed been able to find a replacement position which will have me start in September in a city outside of Seoul called Cheonan. Cheonan is a newly developing city just an hour or so outside of Seoul, and its quite a nice little place to be and I'm excited to see what it has to offer.

  

I'll be working at a school franchise known as JLS, one that has actually been experienced from one of my friends and had spoken quite positively about their operations. The only difference this time around is that I'm the only foreign teacher working at this establishment. It's both awe inspiring and a bit unsettling as I've never been in that sort of position before, but many of the Korean teachers are Foreign born (Gympo's) so their English is top notch and easily understandable.

However, before I moved over to Cheonan, I was able to experience two really amazing sites of Korea during the spare time I had when I was unemployed. The Korean War Museum and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) both of which were must see's during my time here and certainly made me enjoy them.

My friend Teddy, a fellow airsoft player from Canada who I met through my games had offered to take me to the Korean War Museum, a museum that not only spoke about the military history of Korea, but also as a memorial for the Korean war and a rather deep explanation of how it all went.

The first thing we saw was outside the museum, rows upon rows of military vehicles and equipment used from the Korean War to the late 80's and the end of the cold war. Majority of the equipment was American/Korean tanks and aircraft but there were a few Soviet/Chinese pieces of equipment; from missiles and rockets, to artillery and naval ships and guns.

As you can see, quite a collection, everything from the awesome M48 and M60 Patton to T-55's and PT-76's (North Korean Versions of course). It also carried a wide arrange of aircraft (including a B-52!). It was an awesome experience to see all these pieces of military hardware, some of them even opened to allow you to step inside and observe it.



Being a military enthusiasts, I was in heaven to see everything, and whats funny is that I knew a good deal about a lot of what was displayed. Teddy and I would talk a ton about each piece and figure how it worked, what it did, and what it might have been like to be in one. They also had a K1, which is the R.O.K (Republic of Korea's military) main battle tank.

Further on, I was able to find two of my favorite combat vehicles. The AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopter and the F-86 Saber Combat aircraft.

Having a chance to experience being up close to these vehicles really brought out the inner child in me, I was giddy as a school girl, and so much so that even my Figma figure of Kriska (Total Eclipse) wanted to have a chance to show herself and her interest.

As you can see, she was more towards the Soviet equipment such as the T-55 and the Mig-17, both of which were quite impressive machines in their own right.

Inside the museum however, it was a bit different, much of what was around was war memorials, and right off from the front doot you walk through one of the largest and possibly most beautiful memorial I've seen. A solemnly memory of those who died to keep this country safe.

I paid my respects and spent a good two days checking this museum out with Teddy, we both enjoyed it and I had a great time experiencing this interesting piece of history and culture as I've never seen it before. I guess next is to check the War Museum back home in Ottawa.

Another big thing I went to was the 3rd Emergence Tunnel and the DMZ, Demilitarized Zone at the 38th Parallel between North and South Korea. Anyone who visits Korea has to see this, and despite being a tourist attraction, it is still the tenses military zone in the east Asia, a never ending military stand-off between two nations that were once were a united sect.

The 3rd Emergence tunnel was one of four tunnels dug by North Korea for a planned invasion of South Korea, dug deep underground through North Korea to South to help of the deployment of soldiers. Again, due to the rules of the location, we were unable to take photos deep inside the tunnel, so all I got was me at the entrance before we went down 300 meters to the base before walking another ~100 or so to the barrier built inside the tunnel. It was quite crude as it had been blown by dynamite, but the fact it was done so secretly and almost unnoticed was quite an amazing feat.

  Due to the nature of the DMZ being an ACTIVE military zone, pictures were limited to locations only to the Joint Security Area (J.S.A).

Pro tip: the guards are half covered
by the buildings to make a smaller
target.

 The JSA is the epicenter of the division between North and South Korea, it is the closest anyone can be to the other country and quite a tense atmosphere surrounds it (Guess the fact we were escorted by two U.S Marines made it a bit more bearable.) The JSA is also the location of where debates are conducted, its filled with tables and microphones and chairs for the delegates as well as South Korean soldiers standing guard. These soldiers are quite something, they don't carry rifles or anything and you might wonder why they stand like that. Well, all Korean soldiers are trained in a martial arts, and that stance is their ready position in case they are engaged by opposition.

Both the Museum and DMZ were big 'to-do' things on my list for being in Korea and both were amazing and spectacular to see. I had enjoyed it verily and was glad to be given a chance to see them before I moved southward from Seoul. Now, having moved and settled into Cheonan, I'll be curious to see what I can get up to doing while I'm here for a year.

Five months in and a change of pace

This is a bit of a delayed entry I had planned for the beginning of June, but things that had happened caused me to put it on hold for a whole month. I will explain why near the end, but for now, lets keep going with this story.

Its been four months now since my first lessons in English abroad in Korea and I must say there has been quite a lot of personal and educational development on my end. Let me start by saying that I fully respect teachers far and wide, the sort of things they have to deal with are quite overwhelming, but now do I realize just how much work teachers have to put up with so their students can learn and be the best they can be.

To be honest, I had not originally been looking forward to Kindy, I thought it wouldn't be a pleasant experience to teach little kids, but since the first few days, and perhaps weeks, of teaching, I've slowly begun to develop a new sense of care and interest into the little rascals. While some kids make me want to yank my hair out, a good majority of the Kindy I have to deal with have proven to be quite capable of learning and understanding (base-line to be blunt) English as a language.

One of my Kindy kids, Michael, on his 7th B-day

FOOOD!

One of the most interesting aspects about teaching Kindy is how creative and activity-oriented it can be. Something even as simple as birthdays can bring about a whole morning of activities for the kids who are lucky enough to have their birthday that month; less we forget all the snack food and games we play, but that's a given with Kindy classes, you want to have fun. This is the second time I saw a Birthday with my kids and it's always great fun to watch them; though when I need to talk to them about their birthday, they often get all shy and button up, so its up to my co-teacher to speak to them in Korean and read the letters their mother's send them.


One of the largest events I've been through in my school was International Day. I found this to be one of the best activities I had to do with my Kindy class. Not only were we suppose to pick a country to talk about, but also prepare a national food that the country was famous for. I was quite delighted at the prospect, and after much contemplating, I decided to go with Israel.
Weird choice huh?

It actually worked out quite well, we decked out the class in the flag of Israel, White and Blue star of David. We also made Kippa for the students. International day would take two days; the first would be the 'information' day where teachers would talk about their country to other classes but would have to be fun with an activity. After a lot (and I mean a lot) of thought and planning, I finally settled on talking about the temple. Students would come in and get a brief history of Israel and how the Israeli's made two temples. The first one the students make has to be small, but then they destroy is as per history. Then, they make a second temple and it too gets destroyed, keeping only the west-facing wall. Once that wall is fortified, the students line up along it and make wishes. Simple and effective.

The cooking day, which was the second day, was a bit more interesting. I originally wanted to make Falafal, but the fact it might be extremely messy and time consuming cut the idea. My co-teacher suggested Shish-kebab's, which weren't too bad of a choice for us and quite easy to make. There was a ton of food stuffs made that day, from crepes and egg-rolls, to Japanese Noodles and chicken nuggets. It was a very unusual concoction, but a quite delight to eat.

Overall, my experience thus far has been fairly positive. From taking the kids on field trips to playing games with them in class and learning not only about teaching kids, but developing connections and finding many of them to be real sweet children, however, not everything is easy-peasy as time has shown, and sadly, clouds of despair loomed on the horizon.

Near the end of May, the school was going through an Open House session. This sort of thing is a VERY important point in the school's yearly plan; parents for Kindy come in to see their children and get a feel of what sort of things their students do. I had discussed with my co-teacher about this and wanted to plan something simple we could show the parents of our kindy. I had asked her that we should do a Phonics lesson. I've been working with the kids almost three times a week on Phonics and it was getting fairly easy to teach them a fun lesson the kids could enjoy and show their skills. However, my co-teacher said it would be 'too boring' and said I should do something else. I wasn't too keen on that idea as all she left for me to do was Science or Storybook. Neither of those choices I would like to have done, Science has little to no English experience with it as the kids spend most of their time building a toy, while Storybook is almost often just a big game for the kids we play and read here and there, not very good to show the parents either of those, but I wasn't given much else to work with. Even though I expressed my uncertainty, I was told to take one of those two, so I decided to go with Science. I feel this was partly my fault for what will happen; looking back I should have done Storybook, but I felt Science might have been easier for the kids since they wouldn't be so bothered with their parents watching them if they had something to do.

When Open House came however, everything went down the tubes; it was awful. All the kids, even the active one's, buttoned up. None of them engaged when questions were asked, none of them even spoken when I talked to them, and to add insult, one of them even cried for no real reason (perhaps the stress). All in all, it went terribly, and that was just the tip of it. Post that insanity of Open House, my co-teacher, who I had said the idea she suggested wasn't very good, more or less dropped the bomb saying it was the worst open house she had ever done. That's low. I felt utterly beaten that whole week, and it wasn't the end of my troubles either.

The following week I had decided to talk to my director to see how I was doing. Having the open house fiasco still fresh in my mind, I had felt the need to see where I stood with the school. Sadly, this also didn't turn out well; the Director had told me, straight up, I was going to be let go.
The reasons why were odd, all I can say was there had been two major reasons why; I hadn't developed quickly enough for my Kindy classes (apparently there had been complaints about it that weren't passed on to me) and that the Open House had been so bad that the director wanted to find someone else (as I seemed to be lacking the kind of skill she wanted). There was a third reason which goes into my older kids, the fact I didn't often get to things during the lessons, but this was because those classes had a lot to do and not enough time to do them all, but that was the lesser of the two reasons. This blew my head clear from my shoulders. I was flabbergasted, me, for the first time in my life, being let go from a job.

My director wasn't too happy with the prospect of letting me go, she stressed it wasn't something she liked to do, but she had no choice. I'd be given the month of June to finish and if I worked hard, she'd give me a positive review. This is actually a very nice turn of things; despite being soon-to-be let go, my Director had been very helpful in finding me a job and even a place to stay there after. I instantly spent that month job hunting and going out to seek recruiters. My situation, despite being one of dread for being let go, wasn't actually all too bad. I had spoken on a facebook group that deals with Expats in Korea, and my problem
seem to actually be a common thing; Hogwans, private academy's and such, are VERY cut throat. Sometimes teachers will be let go because they aren't suited, other times teachers leave because they don't like the environment. Whatever the case, it happens, and when it does, people can actually find other jobs fairly easily once they are let go.
There are some MAJOR things you need to do before hand, so I'm going to list them right here to help anyone else who might go through (or is going through) the same situation.

1. Keep calm and carry on.
Despite being let go, never lose your cool. You can and WILL find another job, there are plenty here and according to my good friends, many places want to hire people still in Korea because they can see them face to face.

2. Search and never let up.
Always keep looking, its best to try the big name organizations like Avalon, CDI, and so forth that could provide you with recruitment. It also helps to search places like Dave's ESL Cafe and Waygook for job postings. Get recruiters to help you.

3. Be sure to get a reference from your old job (optional)
I say optional because sometimes people don't want to be told by their old director had they were. I was fortunate mine would provide a positive review for me, but others don't often get that chance.

4. Communicate.
Always ask for help, never think you can do this alone; people love to help other people, you'll be surprised.

5. Get your LOR
LOR or Letter of Release is the MOST IMPORTANT document you will need. Let me say it again, it's the MOST important document you need. Your LOR allows you to be let-go from your job and be open to find work elsewhere until your VISA expires. This does however cut down your 1-year Visa as the company that is 'sponsoring' you is releasing you, and you often only get 1 month before the VISA is fully expired. However, if you can talk to your director (and this happened with me) they can sometimes hold off putting in your termination papers (which gives you 30 days to either find a new job or leave), so you get your LOR to look for work, and your old job keeps you 'sponsored' so that you can search for a good while without concern.

6. Get your documents.
Not always a big issue, but it helps to get the documents you sent to Korea. If, by this time, you don't have your ARC, you're in a bit of a pickle, but if you do find other work, usually your Alien Registration Card is all you need as it connects you to the Immigration Database so you can switch over to the new job fairly easily.

Just two of my Kindy I'm going to miss

I've already been pounding the pavements since June for a job, and many interviews and recruiters have helped me find work. To this day, in early July, I still have interviews, many of them close to giving me jobs, but it still a long process and one that anyone should do their best even if they feel lost when let go. It does feel bad for me; my kids will miss me and many of them, mostly my Kindy, showed great amounts of sorrow emotion; some of them even giving me parting gifts because they would miss me. I know I will miss them and I know its not good to have a teacher switch so early in the year, but sadly, things happen; its better to know when you're not in the right place then cause a problem for the company in the long run.

I hold no regrets, I enjoyed it, gained valued experience and know that I can find something soon.

Movies and Political oddities

Well, not much to really say this week. I might slowly begin to ease from posting every Sunday and simply take this to once every two weeks (twice a month give or take) as things have been becoming routine for me; the usual weekly route going into the weekend and the same goes fro the weekend going back into the work week. I did however do something pretty awesome Sunday, and that was see X-Men; Day's of Future Past.
I must admit, I didn't expect to actually go to a movie, but one of my Airsoft buddies had mentioned he was seeing a flick Sunday night, so I decided to check it out and see.

The movie was playing in Gangam, a very hip and happening city, which as the name refers to, it's also the place where Psy came from (hence his song, Gangam Style).

Yeah, I don't think they play down that fact at all...

It was a pretty bustling part of Seoul, very active and a large mesh of foreign and native individuals, what really surprised me was where the station actually was; centered right in a massive underground mall that seemed to spiral on forever (with 12 exits/entrances to boot) it got pretty confusing, but thankfully, the signage was a big help in sorting out where I had to go, and once I met up with my bud and his friends, we started off to find dinner.
I keep forgetting that Korea is built upwards, you can walk into an alleyway and be surrounded by several stories of shops, bars, restaurants, you name it.

We had a sit down dinner at an Italian restaurant and before we knew it, we had eaten and made our way to the movie theater nearby for our showing.

I was originally expecting a Korean dubbed movie with English subtitles, but it was English dubbed with Korean subtitles. Either way, X-Men, Days of Future Past was quite a movie and I really enjoyed the whole thing (including the ending which added some interesting place for another movie after this one.)
When we finished, we actually had to step out into the rain; and this is one of the heaviest rain's we've seen since we got here. The Rain Season is upon us!

A memorial tree of all the wishes to those perished
in the Suwon disaster.
It's been 3 months since that happened.

Another odd thing going on has to be the government elections. For those following what's been going on, a lot has begun to shift with the aftermath of the Suwon disaster. A lot of organizations have been looked into, a lot of rules changed and policies developed, and (not being 100 percent sure) a lot of government officials are being criticized; especially the President.

Apparently, the situation was so bad, that many Korean's are just furious about the terrible organization of it; from the Coast Guards poor response to the lack-luster inspections of the ship to everything leading up to this terrible tragedy and how so little had been done prior to be wary of this. Another interesting thing I heard was the owner of the ship had actually fled the country as all these accusations and legal troubles began to target him for his negligence.

 It also seems unnecessary to see people who aren't directly involved taking flak, ala Miss President. The PM actually resigned in her place to take responsibility for the blame, but can anything really be changed about it? As one of my co-teachers had learned from talking to one of the Korean teachers, the Korea's are just mad about it, they want action, they want change, and they certainly want something done to the organizations at the forefront of the blame (Mostly coastal services and such) for how poorly this was handled. It seems odd, coming from a Western perspective, but it seems Korean's are far more diligent about this sort of thing and they don't let things go easy; especially when almost 200+ teenage students lost their lives because of some terrible management. I'm not the right person to really judge anything; something like this is well beyond my scope and tbh the first thing I've ever really experience. I mean, I've lived through 9/11 and know what its like to take a serious loss, but in regards to the system failing to be properly prepared, well, that's something someone higher up should deal with.

Whatever the case, I've already paid my respects to those passing: I've shared my hate and my sorrow because they are students and children who had lives ahead of them, but there isn't much else I can do for them. I just hope by the time this finally settles, everything will be sorted and new policies, management and security protocols will be in place to make sure this never happens again.

My votes for number 2...or maybe 4? Perhaps 1?

Something else that surprised me was the fact there is a Mayoral race in Bundang. Each day since last week I've seen champagnes showing their 'number elector' to the citizens of the city. I'm not sure what they say, but it seems the numbers they display are the numbers of the ballots to be voted by the people.
Due to the Suwon incident, a lot of these campaigners couldn't get their full show into service, and many have to resort to large groups of people supporting their champing with their colors and numbers on display. Quite something in comparison to what I remember from the Mayor race back home.

Suffice to say, things like that have been going on, but for me its business as usual. I have my life and duty to handle on my own accord and though it isn't as exciting as my first few weeks, I'm sure much more will happen in the coming months ahead.