Ellie

Ellie. What would I do without her? Well, I'd be a bit lost to be honest. Since the very first day we arrived in Korea, Ellie has been nothing but a friend to me. She supports me, understands me and is willing to help me with anything and everything. Seriously, nothing is too big or too small for Ellie! She's made phone calls on my behalf to everyone from the hairdresser to the vet, she's paid for things on her credit card for us and made numerous bookings and reservations for us. But, on top of all of that, she's been my friend. We've listened to each other, laughed together and tip-toed around the class-room when the other one needed a nap in the afternoon.

So far, nearly every time I've visited Incheon International airport, it has made me shed a few tears. The last time we were there I was saying goodbye to my parents and I was a mess. As we left the airport Luke pointed out that the next time we were there, it would be our turn to walk through the departures gate and that then I would be happy...... I replied that then I would be saying goodbye to Ellie, and who knows when I would get to see her again! So, I think Incheon airport is destined to always make me cry.

Still, even though saying goodbye will be oh, so hard, I will take away so many fond memories of teaching english with the beautiful Ellie. And who knows, maybe one day it will be my turn to show her around my country.

Lucy

10 things I miss about home.

1. Friends and family. Miss you all like crazy!

2. I miss the wide open spaces of Australia! There are just far too many people crammed into this tiny country, it's hard to get used to when you come from pretty much the opposite situation.

3. Driving and the freedom of having a car.... still, nothing is going to make me attempt driving on South Korean roads! I value my life a bit too much for that.

4. Chai lattes and baked apricot cheesecake with friends in Cibo. This one is high on the 'to do' list for my first week back home!

5. Talking! I have people to talk to for sure, but I miss being able to freely communicate with people everywhere, in shops, in restaurants, in bus stations, on the phone, the list goes on.

6. Being able to find pants that fit! 

7. Live music. Looking forward to getting to a few gigs when we get back!

8. Being able to read labels and signs. We know the alphabet but our vocabulary is a little limited.

9. Living somewhere where animals actually have some rights! The treatment of animals here makes me so angry.

10. Hanging washing outside to dry. 

Space They Cannot Touch

Apartment living is not something I ever thought I'd be up for. Indeed, I miss having space, especially outdoor space and I can't wait to hang the washing up outside again (it's funny the things we miss!) but in all honesty, I love our cosy little box of three!

I think the reason why I've become quite attached to our home is more because of what it represents than anything else. In short, 402 Garam Villa is our sanctuary. It's one place where we know we can relax, let go and be understood. The area we live in is not the nicest place to be when you stand out like a sore thumb in a country. It is not often that we get smiles from people as we walk down our street. Most of the time we get glared at with suspicion or just out-right scowled at. We are so out of place in our part of town, I think a great deal of the hostility we feel comes from a fear of the unknown. It is so different to be the ones getting singled out and disliked simply because we don't look like everyone else. It's an eye-opener, that's for sure. There are days when this really brings us down but we have learned to block it out for the most part. When we step out onto the street, we put the walls up and try to ignore the negative energy that comes our way; but when we get home, we are in our own space, to quote the lovely Kate Miller-Heidke, the space they cannot touch.

So, although I miss Australia and I can't wait to make a home for Luke, Dusty and myself there with a yard for Dusty and a place for me to hang the washing outside on a warm, breezy spring day, I will, for now, appreciate the space that we do have and enjoy the feeling of being home wherever it may be.

I will leave you with Kate Miller-Heidke's "Space They Cannot Touch". It's a beautiful song and one of my absolute favourites. Enjoy!

Lucy

Kate Miller-Heidke - Space They Cannot Touch 

Dusty's Day Out

We had only had Dusty for a few weeks when I came down with a bad cold and decided to take a sick day. I planned to sleep, drink cups of tea, eat toast and generally rest and recuperate. Dusty, unfortunately, had other plans...

I was dozing in bed when I heard Dusty growling from his bed (on the couch in the living room). I got up to see what was wrong and found him perched on the back of the couch with his back against the window. I talked him down from his little ledge and gave him some reassuring pats, then I went back to bed thinking everything was fine. A short while later the same thing happened but this time I decided it was time to get up and go out for bread. Right from the start Dusty has had a strange habit of refusing to eat when Luke or I are home (unless we're feeding him roast chicken on his bed out of desperation!) so I thought I'd pop out for bread and go for a little walk to give him time to have some food. It sounded like a nice, simple plan, what could possibly go wrong? So, I dawdled up the street to the bakery in my hoodie and trackies and then sat a while on a bench until it started to rain lightly. Thinking I'd given the little fellow enough time to satisfy his hunger I headed home.

Upon opening the front door to our apartment I was met by a speeding flash of pale brown fur and before I could register what was happening, Dusty had pushed past me and was on the stairs. At this point I remembered that the door to our building was open and that he only had to beat me down the stairs to make it out onto the street. I panicked. I dropped the bread and ran out after him. He made it down the stairs and was on the street in no time, sprinting ahead of me with no apparent intention of slowing down. I chased him, shouting his name and begging people on the street to help me. I thought the cause of my distress was fairly obvious but nobody tried to help me. Language barriers aside, I would have thought seeing somebody chasing after a dog, shouting and sobbing loudly would generally mean "HELP ME! MY DOG IS RUNNING AWAY!" Not here. I got blank looks and even saw one man looking scared and running in the opposite direction to get out of Dusty's way. As Dusty approached the six-lane, main road at the end of our street, one woman, bless her, stuck her umbrella in front of Dusty causing him to veer onto the footpath.

I chased that dog (who is seriously fast, I might add) around an enormous block. He nearly got hit by countless cars and I nearly lost my voice from screaming out his name. I chased him and chased him and then, I lost sight of him. My last glimpse of him was as he was racing towards a huge intersection, just a tiny, vulnerable bundle of fur, running in among the traffic. When I got to the corner and looked at the intersection he would have to have made it across I felt certain I'd lost him for good. I turned and saw some builders looking at me curiously and I racked my brain in an effort to remember the Korean word for dog. All my brain would offer me was "namu" which means tree.... not helpful. I then tried to mime "have you seen my dog" (also a dead-end, funnily enough).
I headed home to call Luke to tell him that I had lost our dog and was therefore the world's worst dog-fosterer. Luke left school immediately to come and help me look for him. Neither of us said it at the time but we both assumed we would be finding a badly injured or dead dog.

Well, luck was on our side that day because something made Luke decide to walk a certain way home and as he did so, he came across our little lost doggy, wandering up ahead of him. Dusty had headed straight for the place where he went for his walks, the only place we'd ever seen him wag his tail at that stage. Luke called out to him and he stopped, turned and looked back. Luke said he felt as though Dusty was waiting to be found, he'd made his escape and decided that the hard-knock life was not for him anymore. When I caught up to Luke, he had Dusty in his arms, miraculously unharmed but looking a little shaken.
We took him home, Luke went back to school and I didn't leave the apartment for the rest of the day. Things have gone quite smoothly since then, but it was a long time before I was game enough to take another sick day!

Lucy

Did you have breakfast?

It was with great trepidation that I asked my co-teacher, Ellie to book my first hair appointment. My hair was starting to feel pretty ratty but I was nervous about trusting someone other than my wonderful Adelaide hair-dresser, let alone someone who I was predicting wouldn't be able to understand the majority of what I was asking them to do. Still, I plucked up my courage and asked Ellie if she could recommend a place for me and book me an appointment. Ellie, in her usual way, not only thought of somewhere and made me an appointment, she also requested that I have the best stylist available and then drew me a map to make sure I wouldn't get lost on my way to the salon. Truly, I don't know what I would do without people like dear Ellie! 

The "big day" arrived and I made sure I was on time and feeling relaxed. My hair-dresser, on the other hand, appeared to be a bundle of nerves! I could tell cutting my hair was going to be a bit of a new experience for him.... As I sat down my stylist apologised for his poor english skills (this seems to be something people find obligatory here, I actually managed to communicate with him just fine) and we began the process of working out what I wanted him to do. I was a little amused by the question he asked me shortly after, I think it was out of a combination of finding it necessary to make conversation with me and wanting to practice his english. He nervously cleared his throat and then asked me, "did you have breakfast?" I told him that I had indeed had breakfast and asked him if he had done the same. His response was a rather excited (yes, excited!) "no!" and he explained that he didn't like breakfast. I told him that I liked breakfast very much and quietly thought to myself that this man who somewhat resembles a stick figure, could really do to get into breakfast more often! 

Along with being a tad amusing, the hair-cut was also a success and I left feeling a bit like a celebrity actually. It turns out that my hair was something of a novelty for a fair percentage of the salon. At one point I had three people blow-drying and straightening my hair at the same time. They chatted away in Korean and then informed me that they all loved the texture of my hair, I'm pretty sure I blushed at that point! 

I still go back to that hair-dresser though, I plan on sticking with them until I return to Australia. And yes, my stylist wants to know if I've had breakfast every time!

Lucy

Dusty from Daejeon

Luke and I have a dog. We moved all the way to other side of the world..... and got a dog. What on earth were we thinking??? Well, I'll tell you. Luke and I are both animal lovers and lovers of dogs in particular, so when we became aware of just how awful the situation for dogs in Korea is we just couldn't sit back and do nothing. So we looked around and learned of the plight of a dog shelter in a place called Daejeon. An hours KTX train ride away from Seoul there lives a woman who could well be the patron saint of dogs in Korea. Mrs Jung has given everything up for the lost and mistreated dogs of Korea. She lives in a greenhouse with around 100 dogs and has pretty well been cut off by her family because of it. She takes in and looks after strays and misfits and even rescues some from outside restaurants where they are next in line for the pot. On top of all that, her sister breeds dogs on the very same property for the purpose of selling them to restaurants. So, Mrs Jung saves all the money she can to buy as many puppies as possible from her sister. Unfortunately, the council wasn't too pleased with Mrs Jung's efforts so they decided that the shelter had to be closed. Luckily, there is a passionate and extremely capable Aussie called Tim living in Korea who took action. Thanks to the efforts of Tim and many others the number of dogs in the Daejeon shelter has been dramatically decreased. When the volunteers first started working with Mrs Jung there were around 200 dogs in the shelter and these days I believe that figure is down around 75.

Luke and I went out to the shelter several times. We brought home a dog under the pretense of "fostering" it on our second trip to the shelter. It didn't take us long to talk each other into it, that's for sure! Over the course of a week we went from "no, we really can't take on a dog" to "we can't just do nothing! We'll foster one but we won't keep it." So, we came home with a thin, bony little fellow who was just a bundle of nerves and uncertainty. We'd named him Dusty before we'd got him inside the front door and it didn't take him long to steal our hearts and become so much a part of our lives that we just couldn't imagine being without him. He is the gentlest and most polite little dog I have ever met and these days he is healthy, happy and confident. He will also be calling Australia home as of March next year!




Dusty has really changed this experience for Luke and I. I think he's a big reason why we're still here, sticking it out for the full year. On days when things go wrong at school and I miss home so much I feel like crying all day, Dusty is there to comfort me in his own scruffy way. I just can't wait to see him in a Australian backyard!

If you would like to find out a bit more about animal rescue in Korea, check out http://www.animalrescuekorea.org/

Lucy

Small face, yellow hair

Those who know me well know that I have never been much of a "kid person". I've never seen myself as being all that good with them and a lot of the time they annoy me, so what on earth am I doing putting my hand up to spend a year teaching grade five and six children in a foreign country?? I have asked myself that many times but I have also been amazed by how many times the kids have made me smile and laugh this year. There really are some great kids here, and that's saying something coming from me!

The children here work INCREDIBLY hard. Too hard, in my opinion, and yet somehow they manage to always find a smile and a hello for me. Of course there are bad kids and good kids, trouble-makers and class clowns, just as there are in schools the world over but I have met some kids here who I will remember for a long time. They have their charms and their quirks and I must say they have a knack for paying me compliments. Now, I'm certainly not complaining about having children knock on my classroom door in the afternoon simply to tell me they think I'm beautiful and that they love me, but some of the compliments have been a little unusual....... One day when I was walking out of the school yard I heard my name being bellowed out across the oval. I stopped, turned and saw three of my grade six girls barreling towards me at full speed. They reached me as I was wondering what could be SO important and it turned out that what they just couldn't wait to say was, "Lucy teacher! We love you! You have a small face and yellow hair!" I thanked them and they scampered off, content that "Lucy teacher" now knew of their admiration of her "small face and yellow hair". I asked Ellie what the story behind the "small face" comment was the next day and she told me that a lot of Asian girls believe they have large faces and wish that they had smaller ones like western women. These days, when one of my students tells me they think I'm beautiful, I tell them that I think they are too. I tell them this because it's the truth and also because I find it sad that these girls are growing up permanently believing themselves to be inadequate because of their nationality.

I have gone from being somebody who doesn't really "get" kids to someone who feels happy when a student does well or even just manages to speak english when they've been struggling with it for weeks. Sure, they still get on my nerves at times but they also make me smile and laugh and that, is something I didn't know I had in me.

Well, that's all for tonight so until next time, take care and be happy.

Lucy

The Early Days

6 months ago Luke and I left beautiful Australia to work as english teachers in South Korea. It hasn't always been easy, to say the least, but it has been an experience and a half, that's for sure!

We arrived in Incheon International airport on March 2nd early in the morning with little idea of what to expect other than the fact that we were being picked up, but were to spend our first two weeks in a hotel as our apartment was not ready for us yet. We weren't too thrilled by this fact but there wasn't a lot we could do so we were prepared to just make the best of it. Tired from our overnight flight and a little overwhelmed by it all we made our way to the luggage carousel where we were to get some VERY unwelcome news. We stood there as the crowd of people dwindled away and the appearance of new bags on the carousel stopped. Finally, we had to face the fact that my bag was not going to appear. We went over to the lost baggage counter where we were given a form and told to call the airport the next day...... at this point I fell apart. From there on Incheon airport was a bit of a blur, I didn't really take in much of it through my tears, all I knew was that I wanted to go home!

That first week was a real test for me as I was without my luggage for the whole week and we were staying in a tiny hotel room at the "Nice Hotel". We both started work the day after we arrived so there wasn't a whole lot of time to adjust to the country we would be calling home for the next year. The first week at school was tough more because it was the first week than anything else. There were no classes so I took it fairly easy, I didn't really know what to do to be honest, but my co-teacher, Ellie, was nothing but lovely to me from the very start and we instantly got along. One day in the lunchroom during that first week, as I ate the food that was so strange to me and looked out the window at the dull, grey sky and the stark, boring buildings, I was suddenly hit by how incredibly homesick I was. I tried to hold them back but I couldn't stop the tears from running down my cheeks. Most people had already finished their lunch by this time so the lunchroom was thankfully, quite empty. My tears did not go unnoticed by my principal however, who came over to me and gave me some herbal tea bags and told me (via Ellie, my principal speaks practically no english) that her daughter was studying overseas and she could understand some of what I was feeling. I so appreciated her kindness and understanding at that time, I'm a little disappointed that her understanding has not extended much further than this incident.

So, the first week went by and before we knew it it was Friday afternoon and, joy of joys! my suitcase was delivered to me at the "Nice Hotel"! It instantly perked me up and we went out for dinner to celebrate its arrival and making it through the first week.

It all feels so long ago now and yet at the same time I can't believe we've been here for 6 months. There have been so many memorable moments, some for happier reasons than others, and I will try to recount them here, as they come back to me.

Anyway, that's all for this particular excursion into the early days of teaching in South Korea.

Lucy