What's Hot in Hogye - Getting Started in My New City


This is my wonderful town of Hogye-dong, in the Buk-gu district of the city of Ulsan in South Korea. This is where I live and work, about a 35 minute bus ride north of the main downtown area of the city (at least on a good day when the traffic isn't bad).

One of these days, I'll hike up onto the mountains in the background and get some better, more elevated pictures, so you can understand just how beautiful it is in this valley I live in.


This is the side road that all the buses have to take to get into Hogye, or "Speed Bumb Road" as I've designated it. There's at least 15 speed bumps from start to finish. It was really annoying at first, but I've learned to appreciate it because now I can fall asleep on the bus on my way home without worrying about missing my stop because the bumps will always wake me up just as we're getting to Hogye.



This is Hogye from afar, viewed from the crossing of the train tracks and "Speed Bump Road". I got off here one day to take some pictures and go hiking nearby. 



We got to walk along the railroad tracks and take some pictures with Hogye in the distance.



This is the first street I turn down to get to my apartment off the main road that goes through Hogye.


This is my apartment building, 뜨란채.


To get into the building there is a key pad and an automatic sliding glass door.


My room is just up 2 flights of stairs, room number 303. Most apartments here have electronic key pads to lock the door instead of a hard lock. I love it because I never have to worry about forgetting my keys!


The inside of my apartment is pretty simple. It looks small in pictures, but I think it's actually a perfect size for one person. Plus, I've got a big bed and a much bigger kitchen than most of the other apartments I've seen.


This is the Elementary school that I work at, Sincheon Elementary (신천초등학교). My co-teacher told me it means "little creak". The whole area is named for the small creek of a tributary to the big river that goes through this part of town. It's to the left of the red road in this picture.



This is the entrance to the "English wing" of the school (It's not really a "wing" though, just one large classroom). It's also the hallway that leads to the gym at the end, so I get screaming children running down the halls at all hours of the day. I also found it very funny that of the 4 flags they chose to include in the hallway, they chose the 3 of the four largest English speaking countries and then New Zealand, completely leaving out Canada.




This is the inside of my classroom. It's quite large, with room for 34 students, a mini "computer lab" area, a library area, and the English office (in a separate room behind that window where the clock is). 


My desk is here, at the front of the classroom. (There is no room for me in the "English office" room because it is tiny and can barely fit the 3 desks for the 3 teachers that are in there.

I teach all of the 5th and 6th graders in the school. They have 3 classes each week: 2 with me, and 1 with only they Korean teacher (in which they focus on learning and understanding the complexities of English grammar). I also teach 3 after school classes Tuesday-Thursday: a writing class for 5/6 grade, a painting class for 3-6 grade, and a introductory English class for 3/4 grade.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Korean Baseball Games

Image
Now that spring is here, one of the fantastic must-have experiences in Korea was a baseball game. And, wow, are they exciting! It's nothing like baseball games I've been to in America. First off, you're allowed to bring in whatever kind of beer and food you want - no having to settle for gross and ridiculously overpriced beer! Secondly is the ambiance. Each side has one of these stages with several dancers and an announcer. The home team gets to advertise theirs on the big screen, but each team is equally loud. They cheer and sing and dance through almost the ENTIRE game. When your team is up to bat, the whole crowd (on that side that is rooting for them) stands and chants, sings and does hand motions all lead by the announcer and the dancers. In this particular game our team, the LG Twins, was losing by quite a bit. But even in the last inning, no one failed to cheer their hearts out at the top of their lungs. If anything, they cheered LOUDER because we were l
Read more

A Korean Wedding

Image
Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get
Read more

Seoul Trick Eye Museum

Image
Our last day in Seoul for the long May weekend, we went to a couple places. The first, located in Hongdae, was the Trick Eye Museum. It's an amazingly fun place set up purely to take funny and awesome photographs due to the optical illusions painted in the space. Each work is accompanied by instructions and an example photo to show you how to take the best picture illusion. Here are some of the ones we took that worked out the best.   In addition to our purchase of a ticket to the Trick Eye Museum, we received a complementary admission to the ice museum next door. This place was smaller, but it was fun, too. It was SO COLD inside though (obviously it needed to be).
Read more