Crazy weekend travel adventures part 2 - the GEPIK Orientation and Chuseok Weekend

Hey everybody, here's part two of my travel adventures :)

So, the next week (from Sept 26-28), I had to attend my GEPIK Orientation.  As most of you know, I am teaching through a program called GEPIK or Gyeonggi-Do English People in Korea.  It places native English speakers in public schools in the province that surrounds Seoul.  A part of this program is paid training for all new teachers.  Strangely, the training doesn't happen right away but after a few weeks of being in Korea.  So, I had to take 3 days to go to this training.  The orientation was held in a town called Ansang which is about 2 hours south of me. 

At the opening ceremony, there was an epic martial arts performance 

The training itself was somewhat interesting.  The lectures gave some useful, if redundant, information about teaching, discipling, and life in Korea.  As always, of course, there were a few weird rules.  I thought the weirdest one was "no leaving the premises unless express permission was given."  The funniest one was "no loose behavior" and the one that irked most of the teachers there was "absolutely no possession of alcohol."  The first one made me think that this was going to be a three day prison, the second rule made me giggle, and the third rule made me raise an eyebrow.  It turns out that in the past, GEPIK and the other main public school program, EPIK, has had problems in the past with alcohol.  For GEPIK, someone had taken pictures of people drinking that also had the GEPIK logo plastered all over them and then posted them onto Facebook.  Of course, a parent or 5 saw said pictures and wondered why we were getting paid to go to this orientation.... I really didn't care about this rule, I just thought it was funny that the on site convenience store was selling beer. 

Anyways, the orientation was very long.  One of the days, we were in lecture from 9am to 6pm.  The thing that made it more fun was meeting and hanging out with the other teachers.  Some had been teaching in Korea for years, one guy from Canada had only arrived the week before.  It was great meeting people from all over the world and figuring out where everybody was located.  I have never met anybody from South Africa before, and now I have met 3.  I also made friends with quite a few Canadians.  At the orientation, there was tons of Cananda vs USA bashing but it was all in good fun. :P 

During our down time, we played golf at a driving range.  Yes, I did hit the back netting when I tried (after like 10 swings and misses).  We also played a lot of badmiton which was interesting because we had 4 or 5 people to a team.  I'm surprised nobody got hit in the head.

A video of my GEPIK orientation.  You might notice a certain somebody in the background doing the Gangnam Style dance.  The guy who was taking pictures for the video started to get frustrated with me and my friends because we would spot him taking pictures sneakily and then proceed to pose in a funny fashion.



Oh, fun fact, the bus I took looked EXACTLY like the bus in the Gangnam Style video.  Bright pink with lots of flower draperies.

After the GEPIK orientation, I headed home that Friday around 2pm.  Because nobody was told how late we would be getting home, I had the entire afternoon to myself which I used to sleep and get ready for the big Chuseok weekend.


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Some background.  Chuseok, as I think I mentioned before, is the equivelant of Korea's Thanksgiving.  It is even celebrated similarly to Thanksgiving what with giant family gatherings and tons of food.  Of course, the food is different from out turkey and potatoes.  Because it is such a major holiday and landed on a Sunday, I had Monday through Wednesday of that next week off.  (yep, at that point I would not have taught for about a week).  Also, because it is a family oriented holiday, most Koreans travel back to their hometowns in a mass exodus away from Seoul.  This means that Seoul was practically a ghost town except for the hundreds of foreigners (teachers, travellers and students) who did not have families to celebrate with.  So, my friends and I decided to take advantage of the lack of people in Seoul and try to see a ton of sights over the vacation. 

We started Saturday off with meeting at one of the subway stations to take a city tour bus and get some ideas about where we want to go later.  However, because some of us were coming from very remote areas, we ended up having to wait for 1 hour for everyone to arrive.  During that time, the palace right next to the station was having a changing of the guards ceremony, so we decided to watch that while we waited. 

Photo OP with a giant drum and Georgia. Fact: Georgia and I are the only two people I know who are 21 and are teaching here in Korea.  Guess we're just that awesome.  

 The Seoul City Hall that was across the street.  There are usually a lot of ceremonies and protests held outside of here.

After everyone arrived, we got onto the tour bus and settled in for the ride.  We passed by a few interesting sites, including Namdaemoon, the US military base, the huge war memorial, a giant E-mart (like walmart but bigger). 

Giant E-mart complete with rainbow steps

Chillin' on the bus

We decided to get off the bus at a Korean traditional village and park and walk around while it was still light out. 

The entrance to the traditional village

 Me as a soldier

Giant yutnori sticks.  Yutnori is a traditional game usually played with family around holidays.

 Pagoda with me and some of the other teachers. 

Nadia and I 

After the park, we picked the tour bus back up (our passes were for the entire day) and decided to continue our route around the city.  We made a quick stop at Namsan Tour so that we could take pictures.  I had to use Korean to speak with the bus driver and ask him to wait for 5 minutes so that we could take pictures and not have to wait for the next bus. 

 View from NamSan bus stop

Sorry about the blurry picture, I will be going back soon to get better pics.

After the tour, we decided to meet up with a few more people and go and get some Bulgogi (marinated grilled beef).  While waiting for one person, we met a man from Sweden.  He apparently had ridden his bike all the way from Sweden to Korea. No, he did not go through North Korea, he took a boat.  He had been on the road since June and planned on trying to get to Japan and possibly America (by boat).  It turns out that, yes, he did have a good job when he left.  He used to be a science teacher at a high school, but decided he needed a break.  Since, he was so interesting, we invited him to dinner as well so we could talk to him some more.  He said that it was a relief seeing so many foreigners together.  While eating some delicious Bulgogi, I also tried a Korean traditional alcohol, Soju.  Soju is like a watered down type of vodka typically made either from rice or from sweet potatoes. 

After dinner, we decided that we needed to hit up one of the noraebangs or Karaoke rooms found all over in Korea.  Literally, there is a noraebang on every street in Seoul and at least 1 noraebang in even the smallest villages.  At a noraebong, groups of people can rent a private room for about 10,000 won (10 dollars) an hour and sing on the Karoake machine.  We decided to head over to the university district of Hongdae where there are a ton of clubs, bars, and noraebangs for people to go to on the weekends.  It was a ton of fun and they had pretty much any song you could think of in about 4 languages: Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic. 

Nadia, Kristan, Georgia, and I at the noraebang.

After 3 hours of Noraebang, we were all feeling pretty tired, so decided to head over to a hostel that one of the girls, Georgia, had stayed in the night before.  It is called Mr. Kim's Hostel, and he owns a few hostels around Seoul.  Mr. Kim himself was at the hostel when we arrived.  Unfortunately for us, because we didn't make reservations ahead of time, Mr. Kim's was totally full, but he did offer for us to sleep on the floors in one of the public areas and provide us with sleeping mats, pillows, and blankets for a big discount.  So, we accepted.  At first, we thought we were going to stay in the building that we had met Mr. Kim in, hoever, Mr. Kim noticed that the other foreigners who were staying in that building had decided to pregame in that building's living room and didn't look like they were going to move for a few hours (this was at midnight btw).  Therefore, Mr. Kim brought us across the street to his other building where the occupants there were much quieter so we could rest without being disturbed.  It was 20 times better than the Jimjalbang. 

Yes, that is actually a picture of Mr. Kim ^.^

The next day, we decided to hit up Itaewon.  It was also the main holiday of Chuseok.  I was fairly certain most of the shops were going to be closed, but the others didn't think so.  We got to Itaewon, and as I had predicted, nothing was open.  However, we did notice that there was a Mcdonalds down the road, and we needed food.

 For most of us, including yours truly, McDonalds in America was a restaurant that I only frequented when I had absolutely no time for anything else or just wanted a cheap frappe.  McDonalds in Korea, however, is the first truly American food that I had tasted in over a month and the greasy fries, somewhat questionable hamburger, and the calorie packed pop turned into some of the most heavenly food that I had tasted since arriving in Korea. 

After feasting on the fast food, we decided to wander up and down the street.  A few more shops had opened up, though nothing like I remembered from my previous trip to Korea.

Anyways, after Itaewon, I decided to go back home because a co-teacher, Mrs. Yuk had invited me over for dinner after her family had left.  Sadly, however, she never called that night, so I didn't do anything more exciting on Sunday.  I did, however, catch up on sleep for the next three days which I will talk more about in the next post.