Nic Trips

Our last night at orientation started off with the closing ceremony, in which they showed us a music video composed of many of the pictures and videos they had taken over the course of the orientation. It told about everything we did during orientation in order like a story. It was really well done and people cheered everytime they saw someone they knew in a picture (so for every singe one). Post by August 2014 EPIK Orientation, Daejeon . Be sure to click "HD" if you watch it, it's way better! (I'm not in it much except the group photos and way background shots, but if you're curious, you can see me at 1:41, 1:45, 5:17, and 6:28) After the ceremony, we had our farewell dinner. And by dinner, I mean feast. There was more food that anyone could possibly eat and it was all delicious! Our class leaders, Suzie and Jun, went around to all our tables to take one last selfie with us. The following morning we all left Daejeon. For me and ...

Although we had a curfew of midnight (which thankfully actually kept us in check on getting a decent night's sleep), everyone partied hard each night to be sure to experience as much of Korea as possible right from the get go. This is the main downtown area of Daejeon that is full of bars, clubs and noraebang (singing rooms/karaoke). Most of the bars have really funny names in English. Our favorites in Daejeon were "The the the", "Ho Bar", and "Any Beer". For all of which, it was a necessity that they serve soju . It's a Korean liquor that is similar to vodka and is actually the most sold liquor in the entire world, even though it's primarily sold in Korea. (Gives you an idea of how much they drink it here) We were lucky enough to get to try many, many different foods at orientation, some Korean and some not, but I never got a chance to take pictures of them all. The next few pictures are examples are some of the ones ...

After a few days full of classes at orientation, we got the chance to go on a field trip to Jeonju. After giving us a few hours to roam and have free time, they had all sorts of cultural experiences planned for us. This included seeing the first church ever built in Korea, learning the basics of playing the traditional Korean drum, making paper fans and getting our first taste (at least for me) of Korean made bibimbap! Before they released us to wander in our own little groups for our free time, we traveled with out class (class 1) to the meeting point for the day. Jeonju isn't a huge city, and the tourist and sightseeing area that we stuck around was even less the size, but it was nice to have something to base your wanderings around. Jeonju was full of the little things that make me want to take pictures everywhere. As soon as I realized this, I was so sad because I'd forgotten to bring my real camera! Later on ba...

 One of the many awesome things that orientation gave us the opportunity to try was taekwondo! They had some black belts come in 2 days of the week to give us a lesson on the basics. We all go to wear the uniform and try punches and kicks on the practice gloves. At the end, they gave us a board on which we wrote a goal which we wanted to achieve in the next year. Then we got to punch and break the board! I wrote, "I want to learn Korean language and culture," on mine and I broke it on the first shot!

 There were at least 4 lectures each day that we had to attend. They covered all sorts of topics revolving around teaching in Korea, and some about living in Korea, too. Some lectures were involved little to no movement or thought as we just sat in our chairs and listened or silently scribbled down some notes. Other lecturers chose to get us participating in the kinds of activities we would soon be encouraging our own students to do. These were by far the most fun classes. Other classes had activities for us as teachers, to still get us up, moving and active the way and teacher might do to keep their students interested and paying attention.  Finally, other lectures had us doing group projects or presentations to practice some of the situations we might encounter in our classroom in the months to come.  Regardless, orientation was an overall BLAST and felt like several months of building friendships rather than one short week o...

As part of the EPIK program, all teachers are required to attend the 8 day orientation in Daejeon on a local university campus. Here we will have some classes and lectures on culture, history, language and teaching in Korea to help prepare us for the upcoming year. The first day was scattered with everyone arriving at various times. (I didn't get to the campus until after dinner.) So the opening ceremony and first day of classes was held the following morning. (Tuesday, August 19th) It was a long ceremony, full of all sorts of speakers and welcome videos to explain how orientation would work to prepare us for the upcoming year living and working in Korea. They also had the national champion University taekwondo team do a presentation for us. (as pictured below) This is the video they showed us during the opening ceremony for introduce the staff and all they did to prepare for our arrival: