Goodbye South Korea. Goodbye kimchi. Goodbye adjummas and adjoshis. Goodbye students and teachers. Goodbye serviceu. Goodbye couple clothing. Goodbye dogs in makeup. Goodbye perms and sequins. Goodbye Mokpo, Suncheon, Gwangju, Naju, and Seoul. Goodbye Konglish. Goodbye KPop. Goodbye trucks selling random things. Goodbye delicious Korean food. Goodbye to everyone I’ve met during my time in Korea. I’ll miss it all.
Category Archives: Mokpo
Accomodation in Korea: Officetels
Coming to Korea for the first time and wondering what type of apartment you will be living in during your stay in the country? This article will try and explain what exactly your abode will be like. Prepare to learn about Officetels.
What is an Officetel you ask? Galbijim has the definition of an Officetel as a type of apartment with a few more amenities available than usual. My definition of an Officetel is a studio apartment that consists of one room plus a bathroom. I spent two years in Mokpo living in an Officetel that my school provided for me. It consisted of a small entrance way, a small bathroom/shower stall, a main room with bed, tv, and stove, and a small closet where the water heater was kept. Some Officetels I’ve seen had balcony’s as well. Some Officetels are also a loft apartment (slightly more space).
Officetels are much cheaper for schools to rent for their foreign teachers to live in than renting an apartment. This also goes for famalies too. I’ve seen many famalies with 4-5 people in total all living in a one room studio. You will most likely end up living in one of these tiny places. I had mixed feeling about living in an Officetel. Some days it was alright and some it was shitty. Here are some pros and cons to living in an Officetel.
Pros
- The small size of an Officetel means that it’s easy to cool or heat.
- Officetels are small and don’t take a long time to clean.
- You can multitask in the bathroom (shower while doing laundry while brushing your teeth) 
- If you don’t need lots of space to live, Officetels are perfect.
Cons
- Poor construction. These places are built cheaply. Windows leak air, things never work, etc. Be careful.
- If you can’t stand living in small spaces, you’re screwed.
- The walls are very thin.
- You can’t fit more than 4-5 people into an Officetel comfortably.
- One room and one room only.
- No bathtub.
-The last picture. Make sure you switch your shower/sink back onto the sink before trying to use the sink or you’re in for a surprise.
- Lack of sunlight. My apartment was built before the larger apartments across the street were. The apartments blocked all sunlight from entering my place. My Officetel also had two sets of windows, one of which was tined and the other was frosted glass.
Welcome to your (probable) new home when you come to Korea. Officetels generally aren’t that bad to live in. I liked it my first year in Korea but not so much my second. The lack of light was getting to me as was the lack of space. But for one year in Korea, this is a great type of accomodation and will 
be fine for living. I’m going to also post some flickr searches of Officetels as well as Youtube results. Click on the links in the previous sentence to see.
Last week was my first week back at school. There have been many changes over the winter break. Changes I thought would never happen at my school. For the past two years, I have been teaching (or trying) to teach classes of 30 teens English without the support of the Korean teachers at school. Some teachers would come to class then sneak out the back door as soon as class begun, leaving me trying to keep a class in order. Usually I could hold my own in the class and keep the class going, but sometimes having a Korean English teacher there would have greatly benefitted the students with learning. My Korean is pretty limited and I can’t often translate things effectively into Korean or English for them sometimes. This year, I have FOUR teachers to help me in class and so far the difference is night and day compared to the past two years. The students are learning more and the classes are flowing much smoother and I am also enjoying teaching again. It’s also been great to see my students again too.
Seventeen days to go! I’m off to Suncheon this weekend to explore where I’ll be living in two months and meet some people. It should be good. Have a good weekend!
Class Sizes for Grade 1 in High School
At my high school for the past two years, there have been eight of each grade (1,2,3). Korean teachers across Jeollanamdo have been laid off and as a result, high school first graders have been compressed into seven classes at my school. I now teach fifteen classes a week instead of sixteen. Both classes I visited yesterday had around thirty seven kids on average per class in them. Yowza! But there is a silver lining to a larger class size. I will finally have Korean teachers in class to help me with teaching and coteaching which will be a very welcome change from teaching solo the past two years. The downside to a much larger class size is students will get much less time with a teacher than before and (perhaps) a slightly reduced quality of education. I also feel for their homeroom teachers who have even more kids and even more responsibility as well.
I don’t know about cities outside of Mokpo and whether this is the norm at other schools but all my friends teaching in high schools have said that their first year classes have been cut down to seven as well. I would be interested in hearing what other people are experiencing.
The Boat Island
If it’s broken, it’s left on the side of the road, behind someone’s house, or apparently on an island. While going to Oedaldo last Sunday, I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of the junk boat island that is on the way to the island. Everytime I pass the island, I notice there are different boats or the older ones have been broken down (and hopefully recycled). There is so much waste in South Korea and so many things just being tossed away or abandoned. I do hope that these boats are recycled or reused and not just left here to rust.
ZOMG SNOW!
Mokpo got snow today and lots of it! I estimate between 12-15 cm of snow fell today. It was beautiful to watch it fall and it at times reminded of winter back in Port Elgin. My students loved it because they got to go home early from school (and in turn canceled my only class of the day). The weather forecasts for Mokpo are showing that it is supposed to snow until Friday. I say let it snow…..let is snow….let is snow.
Happy New Years
Where did 2009 go? Have a great New Years! For those of you in Mokpo, Moe’s Bar in Hadang will be having a bash tonight if you are looking for something to do.
