Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Chapter One: On the Street Where You Live



Welcome to Daegu.
As most people know, I've decided to stay in Daegu only a few months because of the Korean teaching style. But I'm not going to let that stop me from enjoying everything I can here. I'm going to post a photo blog here to show what's going on in my life and what this place is like. You enter here: on my street, where I work and live. Above you see the gross roadwork that will apparently continue for the entire time I'm here. I'm amazed at how gross and smelly it can be. And the old people... old people everywhere.


The other direction down my street, my school on the left.

The "garden" or "playground" at my school, which, isn't much of either even if it might look like it. It's very small and primarily unused. Sad.

Self-Explanatory.


The Street Market

My building

Now entering...
The apartment:
My "porch" complete with washer and... drying rack.
The view from my porch
Bathroom (better shots of it to come)
Entrance way and my desk, with wall art that, no matter how nice, cannot balance out the smell of a year of smoking in here.
My bed in front of my kitchen

The entertainment center
Since my entire bathroom is my shower, the necessary shower slippers.
I didn't mention that Korea follows the Asian tradition of taking off your shoes when you go indoors. At school, I teach in slippers. It's pretty surreal.

My kitchen

My one burner, and no, there is no oven.
Another reason I could not be here for a year.







A view from up top:






Our little roof paradise















4 comments:

  1. So apparently there is a way to bake a cake in a rice cooker. Google worthy?

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  2. You need a toaster oven! You can do anything in a toaster oven except roast an entire turkey! We just got a toaster oven and it fits a 12" pizza, our casserole dish, a small muffin tin, a spring form pan, a tart pan...the options are endless. Thanks for the email, I look forward to seeing what you're up to. Good luck with everything & much love!

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  3. Hello..

    I have dredged you up from the depths of google as someone who worked at the Little Genius school in Daegu - for which I apologise, it's probably quite presumptuous of me to contact you out of the blue like this.

    To the point: What's it like? I have read a couple of blogs by people who worked there, one much less than enthusiastic, another not bad, but yours appears to be the most recent that I can find. Are there any major issues?

    Thanks

    P.s. I found when I was teaching in Spain that it is also possible to cook pizza and welsh cakes (which are like shortbread biscuits) in a frying pan. I have no idea what a toaster over is :S

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  4. I feel like Little Genius was a pretty standard English kindergarten. On the plus side, you are not the only English speaking teacher there, usually there are four teachers. On the downside, it's in Daegu which gets pretty old pretty fast. My recommendation is go to Seoul. The only reason not to be in Seoul is to live in a smaller place, but Daegu is still a huge city so it doesn't make much of a difference. However, you will find many more expats and English speakers in Seoul. The atmosphere will not be so Confucian. I felt often that it was expected that my entire life be about Little Genius. I was expected to stay in the school for lunch (even though I couldn't eat the food) and spend my free periods preparing (even when there was nothing to prepare). It was all about keeping up appearances. The neighborhood was also pretty foul. It's been three years, so, it's been a while, but those are my opinions.

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