Posts filed under 'Announcements'
Recently I’ve had a variety of people ask me for information about Korea. One was a student heading over to train with the Korean Olympic Tae Kwan Do team. Tae Kwan Do is a traditional Korean martial art. Another was a student thinking about teaching English in Korea. A third was an accountant who will be teaching in her field at a Korean University next year.
I realized that since many people find out about me and my experiences through this blog, it would be good for me to post my suggestions here. Perhaps even those not considering working in Korea will find something interesting to them. The movies are at the end of the post!
For learning about the differences between U.S. and Korean culture, I found American/Korean Contrasts: Patterns and Expectations in the U.S. and Korea by Susan Oak and Virginia Martin to be a great read. The book takes situations you might experience (dinner at someone’s home, a classroom lecture, a baby shower) and explains how an American and then how a Korean would experience that event. I found it just as fascinating to read someone’s interpretation of the U.S. events as the Korean ones! Another very short book is Living in South Korea by Rob White and Kyoung-mi Kim, which covers all the basics.
For learning the Korean language, I can recommend Teach Yourself Korean by Mark Vincent and Jaehoon Yeon. This series comes at various levels; I chose “all around confidence”. The CDs were easy to understand and apparently gave one a decent accent. I only got half way through the book before I left, but it gave me the ability to speak and understand the basics.
For anyone thinking of teaching English in Korea, you need to read the U.S. State Department’s Guide to Teaching English in Korea. It is located at http://travel.state.gov/travel/living/teaching/teaching_1240.html . There are also a variety of websites dedicated to the Korean TESOL/ESL teacher community that are worth reading if you will be teaching in a hagwon (private English tutoring site). Dave’s ESL cafe is the most popular.
For those who enjoy film, let me recommend two, which I’m happy to loan, or they seem to be fairly available in the U.S. First, SWIRI, which is a Hollywood-like spy movie about a North Korean agent who infiltrates South Korea. It has suspense, romance, and insight into the costs of the long North-South division (1999). Second, and completely different is A Thousand Cranes (also known as Beyond the Years or Chun Nyun Hack on www.imdb.com), a much more traditional, much slower paced story about a traveling musician’s family. This shows the changes in Korea as it modernized and features a very traditional Korean folk music called pansori (sort of like opera) (2007).
Happy reading, watching, and traveling!
June 10, 2009
Greetings. It is hard to believe it has been six months since my return to the United States. I have often thought of posting a blog entry, but it simply has not happened. As 2008 ends and 2009 begins, I would like to start a series of blog entries on being back home. I want to take some time to think about the reentry experience, share some observations, and catch up on some stories. I have missed writing to all of you.
These posts are less likely to have great pictures or the excitement of life in a foreign country. If you would like to unsubscribe from this mailing list, please post a comment or send an email saying so and you will be deleted from the list; we all have to make hard decisions about what we have time to read. Everyone can of course still follow the postings on line at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/bethsalerno.
For those who have not heard, Tod and my trip back from Korea was long. We left my apartment at 6 am to catch the bus to the Seoul Airport. Our flight left at 10 am and arrived in Chicago at 9 am the previous day. We then had an 8 hour layover, which could have been reduced to 4 if an airport employee had properly answered a single question. Thunderstorms then delayed us further and we flew standby on the last Manchester flight out of Chicago, arriving at midnight and driving an hour home. Our luggage arrived late the next day.
The flight was a fitting metaphor for my year abroad - full of the unexpected and the disorienting, and the delightfully surprising too. One of my fellow Fulbrighters and his family was in the airport and on the plane, eating up all the exotic things from their refrigerator that were not permitted entry into the United States. Yet the flight and the year left me in need of some recovery time.
The most pointed lesson of the flight was the reminder that even when everyone speaks English, misunderstandings and frustrations are possible and common. The goodwill everyone showed me in Korea was not quite so in evidence at O’Hare airport. Clearly, being back in America was going to take some getting used to. So was being ordinary and “one of the crowd.”
December 31, 2008
This is a “just in case you were worried” public service announcement.
Bird flu is spreading rapidly among poulty in South Korea at the moment. The latest outbreak is in my town, on an isolated chicken farm. The national alert level has been upgraded from yellow (alert) to orange (alarm) and all poulty within three miles of an infected farm is being slaughtered by members of the Korean army.
While the strain of bird flu is the most virulent, and the only one known to infect humans, there is extremely low risk of anything happening to me. You really need to be a chicken farmer to be at risk. There is a poultry farm on my daily walk, but I am avoiding it. It does not have any birds at the moment. I am avoiding all food with raw eggs, and ensuring that any eggs I do eat are cooked to over 164 degrees F, the temperature that kills the bacteria. This is also true for chicken. I am also, just in case, avoiding all the cats in my neighborhood, since they eat raw birds when they can get them and can be a disease carrier.
We now return you to your previously scheduled activities, hopefully without worry.
April 21, 2008
A few readers who get the blog delivered by e-mail missed the last couple of blog entries. There seems to have been a technological difficulty. The last four blogs were:
March 8 - International Women’s Day
Globalization One Bus Trip At a Time (foreigners in Korea)
Holidays (Valentines Day, White Day and Easter)
Square Dancing in Korea
If for some reason you missed one, they are all available at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/bethsalerno .
This is my 50th blog entry. Starting today I have exactly three months left in my adventure. Thank you as always for reading. It is nice to have company on adventures.
March 31, 2008
After I posted my blog entry about celebrating my birthday, I got a bunch of concerned e-mails. People were worried that I must have been lonely eating cake by myself in the evening. Actually I had had such a busy and enjoyable day at graduation, cake by myself was a decadent, reflective way to end the day. However, should anyone still feel I was somehow cheated of a proper celebration, I had one today.
The mail brought a package filled with thoughtfully chosen presents from a group of colleagues in New Hampshire. What amazing people! As I opened things, people kept stopping by; today was the first day of registration for students and all faculty were on campus, working and visiting. Opening presents became a bit of a group event.
I had previously arranged to go out to dinner with more Pyeongtaek faculty, and they turned dinner into a birthday celebration. Afterward we went to norebang (karaoke in private rooms) and I got the Happy Birthday song in both English and Korean. A friend had baked cinnamon cakes and spelled out “Happy B-Day Beth” in sugar stars and red and green sprinkles. We filled the norebang with song, including Take Me Home Country Roads, The Power of Love, Sloop John B, My Way, Three Times a Lady, Uptown Girl, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Johnny Guitar, Hotel California and a number of Korean hits. I still have not managed to learn a song in Korean, but two students have promised to try and teach me so I can sing in Korean before I leave.
As has often happened during my time here, I am a bit overwhelmed by people’s generosity of spirit and gifts of friendship. If all my birthdays are like this one, I am going to thoroughly enjoy growing older.
February 26, 2008
Time is passing quickly. Today was the first day of my fourth month in Korea (I have finished exactly 1/3 of my appointment). It was also the first snow of winter, an icy, crunchy inch or two that melted off by noon.
The second half of my podcast interview is now available at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/2007/11/18/bethsalerno-part2/. In it I talk about the relationship between North and South Korea, how my experience here will impact my teaching, and the reasons you should come touring in Korea. My husband Tod and my two cats get their 5 seconds of fame as well.
November 21, 2007
Recently a Saint Anselm College student, Lauren Weybrew, did a great job interviewing me by phone about my experiences in South Korea. She has edited the interview into a podcast. The first half of the interview is now available at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/2007/10/26/bethsalerno/ . You can play the file on your computer or download it to an MP3 player. The second half of the interview will be available next week and I will post a link here.
October 28, 2007
It is 3:30 Tuesday morning in the center of Seoul, but my body thinks it is time to be up. In New Hampshire it is 4:30 pm (correction: 2:30 pm - Korea is 13 hours ahead) and many of you are thinking about what is for dinner, while I am wondering whether I’m having kimchee and rice for breakfast! Someday I may get there, but right now a blueberry muffin, a glass of milk and some yogurt sound awfully good.
It was a long trip “yesterday” which actually began at 3 am Sunday when I got up. My travel schedule included a 4 am trip to Manchester airport (I didn’t even know they opened that early!); 6:10 flight to JFK airport in New York (people are remarkably friendly when they share a 6 am flight); 6 hour layover in JFK (what an amazingly HUGE airport); and a 14 1/2 hour flight from JFK to Incheon International Airport outside Seoul.
I can highly recommend Korea Air to anyone who wishes to travel to Asia. When I recently traveled to Hawaii on an American low cost airline, pillows, blankets, headsets, meals and even snacks had to be paid for a la carte. On Korea Air I had a blanket, pillow, headset, access to 37 movies, 100 music channels, televisions shows, news, games and other options in Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese - all on demand with my own personal screen. On what other flight could I watch a traditional Korean melodrama and Casablanca back to back? Not to mention being fed about every three hours with food that was actually worth eating and for those who wished, regular infusions of white or red wine.
I am currently housed in the Fulbright Building. The Korean American Educational Commission is the only bi-national Fulbright Commission to own its own building. I expect tomorrow to be busy as I meet the staff and fill out paperwork (with a highly likely middday nap!). By late afternoon, I and my four suitcases (how do you pack a year of your life into 137 pounds?!) will be on the train to Pyeongtaek, my final destination.
With luck once I am settled in I will post some pictures of the area and apartment. Today I just wanted to reassure all friends and family that I have arrived and the adventure continues.
August 20, 2007
Hwanyŏng (welcome!) to my South Korean Fulbright blog. I have not left yet, but I wanted to test out the site by posting an opening message.
My departure date is August 19th, 2007. I am already both excited and homesick. I have spent much of the summer saying goodbye to people, learning basic Korean culture and language, and packing up my belongings. Kamsa hamnida (thank you) to everyone who has been supportive of this year-long adventure. Your encouragement has made it both easier and harder to leave.
Many of you have asked about where I will be teaching in Korea. I will be at Pyeongtaek University, which was founded in 1912 as a Protestant missionary school. It reinvented itself in the 1990s as a national Korean university and its main focus is the creation of global citizens. It has one of only seven American studies programs in the country, which combines the teaching of English with American history, culture and politics (like a French or Spanish major in the United States). All the American Studies Faculty speak English and my courses will be in English. My fall class is Race and Gender in American Society.
The English language website at Pyeongtaek is a little short on basic details like how many students attend. This has made it tough for me to get a sense of the place. However you can get a sense of the history and vision of the school at www.ptu.ac.kr/english/main1/main4.asp They clearly value international perspectives.
For those of you with high speed connections, check out the interactive campus map at the above address. You can click on any building on campus and get a 360 degree view of the campus from that spot. You can also tour the inside of some buildings. I do not yet know which building I will be in, but the International Center and the Humanities and Social Sciences Building are my best guesses.
The city of Pyeongtaek is smaller than I had been led to believe – about 400,000 people. 10,000 of those residents are foreigners (probably due to the presence of a major shipping port, a large American military base, and the University). Pyeongtaek is on the western coast of Korea, about an hour south of Seoul. It is part of a large, flat plain in one of the main agricultural sectors of South Korea. I am told that my University apartment building overlooks extensive rice paddies.
For those who want to know more about the city, please click this link to Pyeongtaek city’s English language website: www.pyeongtaek.go.kr/pub/eng/index.jsp . The “City Guide” section is the most helpful. You can check out the museums, botanic garden, food traditions, and cultural resources. I am sure you will hear more about most of these in future blog posts - especially the food. It may help to know that Korea has cataloged all of their cultural resources, ranging from historic sites (tangible) to pottery glazing techniques and types of dance (intangible). The resources in the Pyeongtaek area are listed under the “cultural resources” section.
I hope to be posting new web log entries once a week once I arrive in South Korea. You are welcome to check back any time and all the entries will be here. If you would like to receive new postings by e-mail, this web log program has a handy “sign up” feature. In the right sidebar of this blog page under the subscriptions section, there is a sign-up box. Simply enter your e-mail address. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Thanks for reading, and I will post next when I arrive in Pyeongtaek!
July 29, 2007
